


To Tell The Good From Bad, Villains From Heroes

by moon_of_mercury



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: M/M, Mission Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 55,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29772501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moon_of_mercury/pseuds/moon_of_mercury
Summary: Almost 5 years have passed since SPECTRE left MI6 vulnerable. Bond and Q have both made their own choices in the aftermath. Now, the time to pay the price is at hand. Ultimately it's all about who you can trust.
Relationships: James Bond/Q, M | Gareth Mallory/Eve Moneypenny
Comments: 63
Kudos: 47
Collections: 2020-2021 00Q Reverse Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [themuller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themuller/gifts).



> This is my entry for the 2020-2021 00Q RBB. Also my first time writing something so lengthy and complicated. Thank you to dear Womble for going over this monster and picking out all the mistakes and giving useful advice. This work is inspired by the awesome and thought provoking art piece by themuller. The sketch can be found at the end of the first chapter, and here's the direct link: https://ibb.co/gPhZtm4

He’s not a good cat owner.

The thing is, cats don’t care. They have no concept of good or bad ownership, they just exist in the world as it is for them and survive.

Thirteen hours is not even the longest they have been alone this week. Poor Cat and Kitty. Cat has dropped a total of six different items from the kitchen counter onto the floor, among them the dry cat food container, which has not opened, to her apparent disappointment. She does that when she’s hungry and there’s nobody around to feed her. She also pees in protest and he’s not looking forward to finding the possible surprise this time. Q picks up the pots and utensils and cleans up the splatters of cold, spilled tea that had been the forgotten contents of a mug that now lays shattered among the mess. He fills up their bowls with fresh kibble and water and some raw minced meat. He should really do something about that idea of an automatic feeding device. It’s just petty tinkering, but it takes _time_ , dammit. Cat prowls around him, ready to pounce as soon as the food is served, but Kitty has run off, scared of the noise, and Q finds her hiding in the bathroom closet among his too-high pile of laundry. She won’t be tempted to eat tonight.

He scoops her up and walks to his bedroom, too tired to strip or pull off the duvet. He throws himself backwards on the bed, taking care of not scaring or hurting Kitty in the process. She curls up on his chest and starts faintly purring.

Q may not be a good cat owner, but he can’t bear the thought of giving them up.

The next day is shit. All the days have been shit for a long time, Q muses, and it really isn’t a good sign. It’s not healthy to feel that way and he should probably talk to someone. A professional, in fact. But there are too many unsaid things between himself and anyone at Psych for him to even consider a voluntary visit – any visit, really, that isn’t strictly mandatory. He doesn’t keep count of his personal secrets, but there are so, so many by now. How they started piling up he doesn’t want to think about too closely. It’s nothing serious after all, nothing with any consequence to anyone besides himself, should they come to light. If anything, he might be fired for omitting personal information. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.

That’s the first time he thinks about it: it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he left.

* *

Three weeks later, he gets a call from M. He’s summoned to an unscheduled meeting, which in itself is nothing very unusual, but he can hear from M’s voice that he should be prepared for something unpleasant. It ends up being nothing new, either: he’s being informed that another of his top projects will be cancelled due to budgetary restrictions (and probably Brexit negotiations, due to their Italian, French and German partners, although nobody is admitting that). The collaboration with RAF was _big_ ; he’d dedicated a lion’s share of his time for the past year and a half to it and now it’s all about to fall apart. He wonders briefly what kind of personal grudge or political agenda it is this time that gets a boring old cover story of not enough money.

Why _now,_ just when his ultimate proof of engineering genius was almost ready for practical testing? Countless man-hours had been spent acquiring and manufacturing parts, soldering circuitry and components into intricate designs, coding the software (more than 400 000 components and 10 million lines of code, almost 40% more than in a standard fighter...) and all of that for nothing. Most vexing of all for Q, however, had been managing the open envy and hatred of his RAF counterpart in the project. Finley had made it quite clear what he thought of Q personally as well. Almost as if the man had made it his mission to discredit Q and his techies and coders for no apparent reason than personal bigotry and injured pride.

The stupidity of it is unfathomable. The waste of money and resources. Britain, or MI6 for that matter, would never get to have the crown jewel of the project; the unique Hybrid U2020 fighter jet/submarine he had designed for them - and without any undue hubris – single-handedly made possible. RAF would, however, reap the benefits of his coding genius for their next generation fighters. For Q, it was a small consolation that felt more like a slap in the face, having given one more piece of himself away for nothing.

“I know it meant a lot to you, Quartermaster, and I am sorry.” Mallory does look apologetic, but to Q, who knows his boss well enough, there’s still something off. “… But priorities must be reconsidered. You must understand that we are still under tremendous strain from the added costs from the damages caused by SPECTRE, among other things. The effects will last far into the future. We were too optimistic a year ago.”

He feels like M has made this call keeping only his own counsel, certainly Q’s opinion or suggestions have not been heard, and there must be some protocol violation somewhere in there.

“That’s not all, is it, sir?” Q asks, managing to keep his voice calm despite the surging anger.

“No, but I’m not at liberty to disclose any more information. Rest assured that I have done and will keep doing all that I can to ensure Q-Branch the best possible resources. I trust you to re-organise everything so that most of your hard work can be salvaged for something useful to MI6.”

Mallory’s face is serious, the closed-off expression telling Q that he very much wants this conversation to be over without further explanations. He stops pacing and sits behind his desk with a sigh, closing his laptop.

And that’s that. Q tries really hard not to blame Mallory. Yet, this is the fourth time within a year that a major R&D project had been cancelled. And that’s not all: important, long-running missions have been pulled up short, agents transferred to other duties or locations, intelligence that in Q’s opinion required action quietly ignored. It makes M’s words of assurance sound like empty promises. Like he doesn’t even mean it anymore.

That’s the first time the suspicion crawls into his mind: what if _M_ …. What if.

He can’t stop thinking about it.

So he starts digging.

* *

A couple of weeks into his research, which has yielded surprisingly, frustratingly little, Q decides to let it go. He knows what’s in Mallory’s file, even those parts that have been redacted or placed behind higher security clearance (and there are only two levels above him in the whole country). There is literally no archive or database that he can’t get into, given enough time. But none of it gives him true insight into what’s going on. _If_ something actually is going on. He’s starting to doubt himself on this. Paranoia is not a good look on anyone, least of all in his profession. On the other hand, isn’t it suspicious in itself that nothing save for a few speeding tickets and a divorce trial have come up? Aren’t all the higher placed state officials more or less compromised, even corrupt, if you ask the right sources?

Just as he’s made the decision to drop his personal searches, a mail notification pops up on his phone from his gmail. Yes, Q has kept his old Google account. A very much personalized one, with his own enhancements and protections, but it’s still a gmail. And thus, somewhat vulnerable, and against the terms of employment. He’s always known this is one of his personal secrets that might get him in trouble with Six if they ever found out, but he’s taken every precaution to avoid it. The thing is, he’s still that awkward nerd at heart, and his old fandom peers and hacker community mean a lot to him. This anonymous account was created for that very purpose, a long time ago. He uses it rarely but won’t give it up any more than he would his cats. He would never use this account on any of his MI6 issued devices, but he knows well enough that there is always a loophole somewhere for a skillful hacker.

The message is not from anyone he ever expected to contact him, least of all in this way. Michael Blake was a fellow student from times long gone, a year older than Q when they had first met in Uni. Q might have had a bit of a crush on him at some point, but it was more than obvious to him that it was one-sided, so he’d quietly stomped it to death and settled for a mutually beneficial academic acquaintance. Had it somehow evolved to something more, it would have ended anyway, once Mike’s scholarship ended and he returned to the US, he’d reasoned. The man was brilliant and very passionate about his interests, and Q had sometime later wondered where he’d ended up working. His name didn’t come up in any publications or discussions he was familiar with.

Until now.

Blake refers to him as ‘Dear Benjamin’. It feels weird. Benjamin Shaw was long ago buried, in a purposefully obvious manner. Those that knew where to look would have known he was in fact on the government payroll, listed by the name of one Nick Wallace. Those with the right access would see that he worked for MI6 and eventually was promoted to Quartermaster. No one, except the Quartermaster, knew that he’d never existed at all. 

Q is actually surprised to find that Blake would make the connection of that name to his official MI6 alias. He certainly wouldn’t be among those who had clearance to that information.

The invitation itself is simple: meet Blake and his employer in London, over dinner at a place of your choice, at their expense, to discuss ‘an offer you can’t refuse’. Q laughs aloud at that, despite the seriousness of the whole matter. His one-time acquaintance apparently knew Q better than he realised. Maybe there would be no harm in finding out what it was all about. In any case, he isn’t overly worried about his security being compromised. It wouldn’t be.

He replies immediately, suggesting the very same evening if they are in the city. Act fast to avoid any chance of them bugging the place, as he would instruct an agent in the field. He picks Clayton Hotel in Whitechapel as their meeting spot after a quick search of alternatives. He doesn’t want to bring them anywhere too near to MI6 in any case. He knows the place itself is nice, neat but nothing too fancy, mostly frequented by business people but also regulars that appreciate their traditional British a’ la carte. Definitely a public space but offering suitable premises for a more discreet conversation.

The confirmation from Blake arrives within a minute. Interesting.

* *

They sit at the table after short, polite greetings. Blake’s boss introduces himself as Safin. Q shakes his hand but doesn’t offer a name. He doesn’t ask. The man doesn’t look even vaguely familiar, and Q is sure that he would remember the distinct scarring on his face and clearly foreign accent.

Bond could probably place it right away.

Where did that thought come from, Q briefly wonders. He hasn’t thought about the former agent in ages. And he isn’t going to start now.

It’s just that this whole thing is starting to feel more like one of Bond’s off-the-record adventures.

Q freely admits that he hasn’t been keeping tabs on the academic world like he used to earlier in his career. The practical and hands-on work he focuses on nowadays doesn’t lend much time to it. Maybe if he had, he would immediately recognise Safin’s name. It might not be his real name after all. Q is not naïve enough to believe anyone, even an old friend, would try to recruit him for a regular coding gig. Whatever this is, it has to do with sensitive intelligence.

Blake makes small talk while they wait for someone to come and take their orders. He jokes about their old hobbies and the careers having swallowed them both whole. Safin is quiet, studying them carefully and Q gets the feeling that Blake is being observed as much as Q is.

“Mr. Shaw”, he finally begins, “Or should I call you ‘Q’? As you know, we have not invited you here to discuss your affinity for the Star Trek franchise, or Dr. Blake’s collection of plane models. I happen to know that the situation of your projects at MI6 has been…. far from ideal, lately. Owing to the fact that my resident aerodynamics specialist and head of the Global Operations, Dr. Blake here, is also your long-time friend, we believe that we might be able to offer you the right incentive to… switch allegiance.

Q is taken aback by the very direct proposal. He would have expected more subtlety from any of their current adversaries and even organisations like the CIA or American Secret Service or Interpol who might have interest in his work.

“Ours was rather a brief acquaintance, although with fond memories,” Q corrects him, not daring a glance at Blake to see his reaction. “We never really worked together and have not been in contact since I graduated. And my allegiance is strictly tied to my contract, with its non-disclosure agreements and a non-compete clause. Unless you want me to work as your chauffeur or a cleaning lady, I think I’ll have to pass.”

Safin looks completely nonplussed at the refusal, and Q feels himself fidgeting in his seat. There must be something the man knows he is holding over Q.

“Well. Nevertheless, ours is a great enterprise and there will be a great position on offer, which I’m sure will not be in conflict with your previous contracts. And even if it were, nobody would ever learn of your involvement unless you specifically chose to let them. We control the information, Mr Shaw. You must have wondered how we found you, the _real_ you. The answer is simple: we know everything we want to know and find anyone we need to find.”

“Oh, looks like I’ve landed myself a very own supervillain of the week, M is going to be pleased,” Q deadpanned.

Safin smirked, his speech gaining momentum, hands animated and eyes bright like the preacher of one true faith. Q is not impressed.  
  
“Not quite, Mr. Shaw. We are merely a network of influential business partners and private research organisations, guided by strong ethics rather than national or political interests. Even the capitalist pursuit of profit is not our priority.”  
  
“Splendid. So what do you need me for?”

”You have a lot of the kind of experience we need. That is also what we have in common. You and I are very much the same, Mr Shaw. SPECTRE thought they were doing something clever. But they only worked for their own profit, and that is where they failed. I would know; they essentially made me into who I am today.” Safin smiled at that, an unsettling twist of the scarred lips that Q took as wholly intentional. “It wasn’t easy to get out.”  
  
“I can promise you their recent downfall is as much my doing as it is yours, or MI6’s. But you are very wrong indeed if you think them defeated and disbanded. SPECTRE has their tendrils everywhere still. Terrorist organisations and corrupt governments rule the world. The world needs _us, people like you and me,_ who have the skills and determination and the means to turn around the slow armageddon we are headed towards. Join me -- together we can eradicate what is left of SPECTRE. And it doesn’t stop there; we can finish what intelligence services under corrupt governments have become incapable of doing. To make the world a better, safer place.”

“Why don’t you offer those skills and determination and whatever else to an agency that shares your ideals, then?”

Safin laughs.

“There are none. Tell me, “ _Q_ ”, have you not felt like something isn’t right in the very system you are a vital part of?”

Q doesn’t have an answer to that. He looks at Safin, swallows nervously despite his best efforts to appear calm, and the man reads his thoughts like an open book.

“Imagine if you could still have the U2020, only with better technological solutions made possible by an unlimited budget? Imagine having your hands on an AI project you have only dreamed of. Imagine coordinating a team of scientists and technicians who can develop the most sophisticated weaponry and information technology in the world and combine them – and NOT sell it to the highest bidders, who always happen to be the most dangerous and corrupt organisations on the planet.”

“ _What_ is it, then? The organisation you are talking about?”

“There isn’t one. That is the key. They cannot destroy something that doesn’t exist. They cannot stop something that just happens on its own volition.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It will, I promise you. I have all the connections in the world we need. All the resources. We just need the Master Architect, so to speak, who can orchestrate our ground-breaking innovations into one beautiful, viable, failsafe system. And that, my friend, is what you are going to be! Let me tell you something, Mr Shaw. Blake and I, we had just developed a brilliant concept we call the Mind Reader – it doesn’t actually read minds, of course – when we realized there was one type of barrier it could not breach, one organisation that our SPECTRE files indicated we should have accessed and couldn’t – MI6. And then, Blake told me that he once knew a guy who could hack into any imaginable system and develop security protocols beyond anyone’s imagination. _That_ guy either built that system or he would know how to take it down. I tasked him with the job of finding said man. He did. Small world, isn’t it?”

“What will you do if I decline? What will you do if I go directly to M and report everything? Publicly expose you?”

“As I said: there is no way to destroy something that does not exist. You could say we are a force of nature. There is no crime to punish or an enemy to hunt. Just business and research, unstoppable minds engineering the outcomes towards the greater good instead of shortsighted rush into the inevitable crash. I am not afraid of your agency or your government, Mr Shaw. They cannot control me. If anything, they owe me.”

Blake speaks up after a long silence, “Think about it, Ben! It doesn’t all have to be so grand. We could develop all those crazy ideas we had back then. Make them into something marketable. I have, in fact, made some prototypes based on some of our imaginings. I know how you love your gadgets. You should see everything. I would show you, even if you decided to say no. There’s no need for secrets. And I believe you are already familiar with some of the collaborators within our business chain. I heard Brexit caused you some trouble. Well, it has zero effect on _us_ , as you will see, we are free to make our own deals with anyone. We already have mutual French and Italian allies.”

“You will forgive me for not giving you an answer directly,” Q says decisively. “MI6 is off-limits, no matter what. And I’m perfectly aware you know my intention is to dig into your backgrounds as deeply as I can before answering at all. If I will answer. It all depends on what I find.”

Q stands up, leaving half of his plate unfinished and his wine glass nearly untouched, and walks away.

Half an hour later he comes home and opens his personal laptop, removing the uppermost button from his shirt and digs out the data-chip inside it to extract voice and image recordings. He matches them to the MI6 records first, without much success (he gets a few results on Blake, but they’re essentially useless), then spends the rest of the night hacking and running searches. 

Q works the next day with bags under his eyes and gets worried comments from Moneypenny and R, sleeps for two hours when he comes home in the evening and wakes up again at one thirty in the morning to start combing through all the relevant databases he can think of. He keeps this up for four days straight.

He thinks of Bond again at one point. The nano chips in his blood have either stopped working some time ago or he really is dead this time. Not that it is any of his business anymore, especially since the Smart Blood project, too, got cancelled. But he thinks of Bond, because this still looks like something Bond would do – accept a personal mission bordering on madness, and go about it behind the backs of MI6.

If Bond were still here, Q might talk to him. Bond had come to Q so many times to ask for favours. Q wonders if it could have gone the other way, too. Would Bond have helped him if he’d asked?

It's been just four days, but it’s a long time without sleep and the weight of the world on one’s shoulders. There’s only one thing to be done. He writes two short emails that will seal his fate and sends them. From this moment on, he is essentially alone. On his own. If something goes wrong, no one will come for him. No one will even know. He should at least call his mother, it’s been ages, anyway. Q closes his laptop with more force than necessary, pointedly refusing to think of Moneypenny, Tanner, R or any of his ‘minions’. There’s a feeling of emptiness inside of him. He’s pretty damn sure that if he’d gone to the Psych appointment for a talk, they would not have advised him to treat his melancholy quite this dramatically.

* *

Mallory has just finished his seemingly endless journey down to the garage after being interrupted countless times between leaving his office and stepping out of the lift in the basement. He wants to kill the Foreign Secretary. And Lawson, the pompous prick posing as the Secretary of State for Defence deserves to be hanged, drawn and quartered for the downright treasonous shit he keeps pulling. He’d been the staunchest supporter of the Nine Eyes project, and being proved wrong never sat well with him. Hell, he wants to kill the PM too while he’s at it. And the worst thing is, he’s not remotely the only one. Bloody cockfights, those meetings have become. Of course, his personal mobile vibrates in the pocket of his winter jacket the moment he reaches for the keys of his Mercedes. Cursing softly under his breath, he opens the door and sits down before he reads the message.

He’s thankful that he did sit down, after it sinks in.

_Thomas got evicted. He needs a new place asap, we’ve found a flat he likes near the campus. 40K for now will do. See to it that I have it on Monday_.

He can practically hear her words spoken in that dry, venom-laced tone she uses with him.

He wishes he could still shed a tear for his broken family, but his eyes remain dry and heart barely feels a twitch. Bitch of an ex-wife with too much influence and a huge debt, and a son who wholeheartedly despises him and believes his mother’s lies. 

He will pay it, of course he will: it can’t go public, the way his son chooses to abuse his privileges. And underneath it all, there’s still the pathetic wish that someday they might be able talk like two civilized men and come to an understanding. But the fact is, as a civil servant, his wage is actually rather modest. These kinds of requests simply can’t become a habit. Unfortunately, telling that to his ex, who’s always had enough of a name to disregard such worries, seems to be a practise in futility. She had spent her family fortune until the name and a scandalous bankruptcy became all she had. He’s glad to have been divorced by the time the news hit the papers.

Mallory’s identity as M is not the carefully maintained secret Mansfield’s was, his public career prior to MI6 making it next to impossible. If there’s one thing he envies his predecessor of, it’s that solace of anonymity. He wishes Six could enforce his personal privacy like Q has armed and protected his car and home against any conceivable threat.

He comes home late again, finding his fridge empty and coffeemaker malfunctioning. After that, he’s in such a foul mood that instead of going to bed, he sits at his desk and powers up his work laptop once more. There’s always work to be done.

There are a couple of new emails from Moneypenny, neither of which requires immediate attention, but he reads them through carefully anyway and sighs. Tomorrow doesn’t look quite as daunting as it had a few hours ago. She really is a treasure, making his job so much easier. At least he doesn’t want to kill someone so badly anymore. He makes a mental note to thank her, first thing in the morning.

Then he reads the last one of the messages and knows he won’t be sleeping for a week.

It’s only a handful of words, accompanied by a few attached forms.

_Please, accept my resignation._

_Q._

* *

“I wish we could make you reconsider,” Tanner says, voice heavy with regret and his posture defeated. He had certainly tried, many times. As had Moneypenny. Q thinks that he’s never seen her this distraught at work before. She’s almost crying, standing next to Tanner at the entrance of the main lobby, and almost leaning on him for support. Like someone had just died. He can’t look them in the eye, he feels like a traitor.

They were his friends. His _only_ real friends. He had often thought that he’d given his everything to MI6, but Six had also given him something back. It seems like Q hasn’t been fully appreciating the depth of it until facing the prospect of losing it. Sure, he had enjoyed the company of his work friends, especially Moneypenny and R. But there is a flight ticket to Dubai burning a hole in his pocket, and the last of his personal belongings that he is going to take with him stashed in his bag, and he can’t back down anymore. He shakes his head decisively.

“At least tell us why!” Eve can’t help but cry out, as Q turns away to make his way towards the exit.

He stops once more and looks over his shoulder at the place where he has spent most of his time for the past ten years. He lowers his voice so that random passers-by won’t hear him.

“When I took on the position of Quartermaster, I believed I could make a difference. That through my work, lives could be saved. That it would offer new challenges, and yes, excitement. I didn’t expect to end up building Lego gadgets for overaged kids.”

“Now, that is unfair—” Tanner tries to interrupt, but Q goes on.

“Look around yourselves. We thought we saved Six after Nine Eyes was taken down, but we’re still crippled. Think about it.”

He tries to collect himself, but his throat feels raw from the pent-up emotion as he speaks up again. “I have made many good friends here. You have meant a lot to me. For real. But please, don’t try to contact me.”

“Q! That’s not--” Eve tries to dash after him as he leaves, but Tanner holds her back, and shakes his head _no_.

[](https://ibb.co/gPhZtm4)


	2. Chapter 2

“James!” The shouted greeting barely carries over loud music but manages to catch Bond’s attention.

He’s sat at a table in his favourite corner bar, watching out of the window into the darkening evening. It’s warm and cozy in the way that Jamaican atmosphere is, once it has started to feel like home. And it has, for the past three years. If he’s being honest, Bond will admit that he’s been expecting his peace to shatter for some time now.

Felix Leiter makes his way to Bond’s table and sits down opposite him, not bothering with pleasantries.

“Finally,” James says, a little tersely, “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show up. What is it?”

“An old friend can’t just visit? Where’s the lady? I’d hoped to bribe her with a little souvenir,” Felix asks, pulling up a small jewellery box with a Givenchy logo on it. “Long time, no see,” he explains, additionally handing James a £200 bottle of vintage Taittinger.

“Oh, consider me placated. Still, this visit is not a social call if I know you at all. Spill.”

“No, you’re right. I’m not here to waste your time, or mine, so I’ll ask directly: have you been in contact with your former Quartermaster recently?”

Now, that manages to surprise him. Excluding Leiter, whom Madeleine doesn’t seem to much like, he’d made it a point to shed any traces of his former life.

“No, not at all. Why?”

“Not at all since he left Six?”

“He  _ left _ ? What the hell, when?”

“According to our intelligence he’s not been on their payroll for the past year and a half, at least.”

“Why are you looking for him?”

“Take one god damn guess, James.”

“Someone hacked the CIA and you think it’s him?”

“Still sharp as ever, I see. Only it’s not  _ just _ the CIA. Will you help me find him?”

“It used to be the other way around, Felix. You know, him tracking me. For all I know he can still keep tabs on me with that Smart Blood thing. Too bad it only works one way.”

“It’s been a series of… I don’t even know. We mysteriously lost some SPECTRE related data. The Pentagon doesn’t even know what _ they  _ lost. It’s a mess, but the breach was into a critical area for our national security. The DS&T folks are convinced it fits into a bigger picture involving international weapon trade, possibly cartels and even certain terrorist cells. We are tracking a few leads that seem too convenient to be accidental. An American named Dr. Michael Blake ring any bells? Your Q may have made himself some questionable friends.”

“Felix. I’m absolutely, hundred-percent sure that Q would never betray MI6. Are you certain you’ve not stumbled into some deep-cover operation?”

“Well, I have faith in our people. They know what they are doing. But I trust your judgement, that’s why I sought you out. This has the potential to become really nasty, if we’re to believe DS&T’s reports. He might still trust you. Track him down and find out what’s going on?”

Bond hesitates for a moment. He knows the CIA would never officially ask for his help, especially if it required confessing to MI6 that someone associated with them had hacked their systems. But they would go after Q regardless. It wasn’t his job anymore, and he’d been feeling the effects of retirement all too clearly for the past few years. He isn’t in shape. He hasn’t been keeping tabs on the goings-on in the world of espionage. The news in itself that Q had quit MI6 is shocking.

The expensive bottle between them on the table explodes in a brilliant splash of amber liquid and shards of glass.

Deja vu, Bond thinks as he dives for cover behind the nearby counter. People scream and there’s a moment of pure chaos as everyone scrambles for the exit. Felix throws him a handgun from across the room, and slowly they inch towards each other, back to back, searching for something to aim at. Leiter’s the first one to return fire, as it takes Bond a while to locate his target and get a clear shot. He misses four rounds and runs out of patience, charging after the target. Felix shoots his dead, and curses. Too bad; that one would not be talking.

Bond is out of breath and out of bullets soon enough and decides to give up the chase. He slips into cover between the wall behind him and some blooming, suffocatingly strong-odoured jacaranda bushes that line the narrow streets in overgrown rows of brilliant blue. The strange, fleshy stench of the dying flowers disgusts him. It’s getting dark, which plays to his advantage as he slowly doubles back to the scene of the shootout. Leiter is nowhere to be seen, and police sirens are already wailing too close, the whole next block flashing blue light, so he decides to get the hell out of there.

His thoughts return to Madeleine then. She’s supposed to be back at their beach house by now. If she’d kept her word this time. He runs to his Aston Martin DB5 and tears off the emptied street, wheels screeching in protest.

He dashes to the front door as soon as he arrives, frantically scanning for danger as he approaches, but once he’d thrown the door open, he breathes a deep sigh of relief and lowers the empty gun from the mock aim. He throws it at Felix’s face, the agent spectacularly failing to catch it. It hits him squarely in the forehead. 

“Dickhead! Why’d you do that?” He protests.

“Asshole. Did you have to lead those bastards right up to my doorstep?”

“No, I wouldn’t’ve had to, if you hadn’t run off chasing them and left her unprotected! Didn’t it cross your mind they might have already known about this place?” Felix retorts, nodding towards Madeleine, who has gone very pale.   
  
“Who were those men, why were they after you?”   
  
““Triggerman” Todd’s cronies, if I’m not mistaken. Anarchist. Social Darwinist. I don’t know what to call them except a goddamn menace. He’s got some kind of a twisted hero complex going on, a gun for hire who works for various radical activist leaders. Could be on Blake's orders. We thought SPECTRE at first, but apparently not. Too small-time for that. And too dumb.”

“Ok, we leave now. I don’t care where we go, but we’ll go. Madeleine, pack whatever you need. Leave all the electronics, anything with a network connection save for your phone, and turn that off. We might have only minutes.”

Bond rushes to collect his own essentials as Leiter suggests, “I know a place. I’d wager it’s good as any of the safehouses of Six. We’ll take your car and leave mine with a little explosive surprise for them in case they come to investigate.”

They drive off into the night, Bond at the wheel, Leiter riding shotgun and keeping a careful watch for anything suspicious. Madeleine sits on the backseat, clutching her bag, and silently cries. He’s mildly surprised she hasn’t really protested.

They take a long and winding road, just in case, and arrive after midnight. It’s another beach house, even Bond himself not quite aware of its exact location, having just followed Felix’s directions down the remote dirt roads. They drive the last miles slowly and without any lights on, avoid slamming the doors as they get out and enter the cabin in total darkness. Inside, they light a couple of candles for a meagre light source that won’t be seen from the outside or across the bay.

Bond raids the cabin’s cupboards for something to eat and they have a quick meal of some biscuits, macaroni and ketchup, and a few cans of beer and sparkling water. (For Madeleine. She doesn’t touch beer, thank you very much.)

Felix grins. “So I take it as a yes, then, James?”

“Do I really have a choice?”

“You always have a choice. But I know you.”

“So where do we start? Do you have a name, a location? You mentioned a Dr. Blake, or something like that?”

“We know that’s not your former Quartermaster’s alias. We have photos. An associate, possibly. We haven’t been able to find anything incriminating about him personally, but his name pops up suddenly everywhere and a lot of the hacked files contained intel on his operations. He works at least through three different corporations, all legitimate businesses. We have an agent tailing his confirmed contacts in Chile. My suggestion would be to start there, meet my agent, perhaps at the Modern Inventors’ Trust gala in Santiago that Blake should be attending in a few days’ time. Find out what she’s discovered and pay attention to whom he meets. Assist her if need be. I will see to it that Miss Swann will be assigned a safehouse and if she wants, a bodyguard.”

“No, thank you,” Madeleine immediately interrupts. “In fact, Mr. Leiter, your presence here today has proven me correct, assuring me that it’s my time to move on – on my own.” She directs a narrow-eyed stare at Bond. “James, this is exactly what I have been saying for a long time, but you never listen. You treat me like an asset, like a damn mission objective, no matter how many times I’ve told you that we would only last as long as the past stayed dead.”

“Yet you tried to dig it up with all your questions, asking me why I didn’t trust you? I wanted us to work, Madeleine. I didn’t want to bring it up. Whatever has come to the surface now, it’s not Leiter’s fault. He warned us. Warned and protected you specifically, even.”

“I should have known from the start that your spy games were more important to you than I could ever be. Why did you ever leave MI6 for me, it’s completely beyond me! I’m not going to fight about this. Go on, chase down whoever it is you’re after. You needn’t come looking for me afterwards, I’ll be fine.”

“Miss Swann, now’s the time to tell us if you know anything. Everything you say will be absolutely confidential. I can guarantee that you won’t be charged with any felonies due to your family connections,” Leiter prompts her, slightly uncomfortable being caught in the middle of his friend’s domestic dispute.

She ignores him, staring right at Bond when she makes the decision. “Alright. The man you are looking for… his name is Safin. Blake is just a henchman. A public face, since Safin… doesn’t really have one. He’s a very dangerous man, James, he’d kill you just for your association with me.”

Bond stares back, steely eyes blazing anger, grief and accusation. She’s always had ways to cut him to the quick, none more efficient than withholding information and disclosing it at the most inconvenient time. Madeleine flinches away from him, but Bond doesn’t let her go, stepping in her way, blocking her escape.

“You keep secrets until they kill us all, don’t you? I could have helped you. You should have told me.”

“I’m telling you now so that you will  _ leave me alone _ !  _ You’ll _ get me killed, no one else! Safin used to be SPECTRE. One of Blofeld’s mercenaries at the start. He grew ambitious and had his own ideas. Blofeld didn’t like him. He had planned to eliminate him on a suicide mission but Safin got out. He was badly disfigured. I don’t know the details. But after that he left. My father was tasked to search and destroy him. He failed. SPECTRE hunted him, he hunted SPECTRE. Still does, probably. They are both mad with the need for revenge, Blofeld and him.”

“And Q?” Bond asks quietly in a more placating tone.

“I don’t know anything about your Q,” Madeleine says tersely. “And I don’t wish to.”

“Alright,” Felix interrupts, “I think it’s time to get some rest. Talk more in the morning. We drive on early. James, I’m taking you to the airport; Miss Swann, I must insist you come with me to the States and take up the offer of a safehouse and a bodyguard until this matter is settled.” He smiles warmly at Madeleine and continues, “I’m truly sorry for my sudden appearance under such circumstances. But I did bring you something nice. I’m not completely without manners.” He pulls the Givenchy box out of his jacket pocket and hands it to Madeleine.

She doesn’t say anything, but the agent takes the minute nod as acceptance, maybe even thanks.

She retreats to the sofa and grabs a throw blanket, pulling it over herself and turning her face to the backrest. The men have a look at the only bedroom in the cabin and a modest-sized double bed, and unceremoniously dump their gear on their respective sides on the floor.

* *

The day dawns red as Bond wakes up from a fitful sleep. Felix snores lightly on his right. He gets up quietly and pads to the other room on bare feet, dressed only in his briefs and a t-shirt. He glances at the sofa and promptly does a double take. The lump under the blanket is nothing but two pillows.

There’s a note on the table in front of the large window.

_ Forgive Me. _

Nothing else.

He looks out the window, scanning the yard now that the first rays of sunlight lend a bit more visibility. He already knows that he won’t find her there. The DB5 is gone.

The candle on the table has almost burnt out. He puts the note to the flame and holds it there until it’s almost completely gone. He doesn’t feel much, and it doesn’t really surprise him.

“Felix! Get up, we have a problem.”

The other man emerges from the bedroom still half-asleep, bleary-eyed and stumbling. Bond files it for later, to fall back on in case Leiter still feels the need to jab at him for having become soft in retirement.

“What?”

“She’s gone and taken the Aston.”

“Well, good luck getting far with that. We’re on an island the size of London.”

“She’s not stupid, she’ll have crashed it off the nearest cliff out of spite by now. She hated that car. She’s likely on a plane to anywhere already.”

“Aww, trouble in paradise even before I showed up?”

“Fuck off, man. I was her bodyguard and little more by the end of the first year. I guess she found me convenient, until I wasn’t. That’s the  _ best-case scenario _ . Think of what else it could mean that she chose to leave right now.”

“Come on, James, cheer up. Women lie all the time, doesn’t mean they’re out to get you.”

“It’s me. Of course they are.”

“You might have a point there, brother.”

They fall silent for a moment, both grabbing their stuff and quickly washing up.

“There’s a boat shack down the road back where we came from. Let’s take a look?” Felix suggests, and they head off on foot.

“So much for the glamorous spy work”, Bond grumbles, as the sun starts warming the humid air and they keep walking and sharing an out-dated box of cookies.

An hour later finds them on the sea, grinning madly with sun glare in their eyes and sea spray on their skin; speeding unreasonably fast towards Kingston.

* *

Three days later in Santiago de Chile, Bond is settled into a hotel and reading specifics on his objective on a secure mobile Felix had given him. He’s got a 9mm Glock 19 handgun and a set of wireless surveillance equipment, also courtesy of the CIA. He feels more at home in a nameless cheap hotel room with them strewn out on his nightstand and a glass of whiskey in hand than he did for a while back at their beach house.

That’s a strange thought: he’d honestly believed he had settled in Jamaica for the rest of his life. He had always loved it there and started to feel like he belonged.

But now, with his old life only an arm’s reach away, his daydream is proven as false as Madeleine’s declarations of love.

“... James Bond, the bloody fool you’ve been,” he mutters to himself, squinting at his own reflection on the glass he’s refilling. “Serves you right. You’re an asshole, aren’t you.” 

He picks up the gun, inspects it again, removes the silencer and peers inside the barrel.    
  


* *

In the morning, he's a bit hungover and generally feeling less than ideal for a day of traditional espionage. Needs must, so he grits his teeth and starts by visiting the closest menswear shop he can find, because he’s in a dire need of clean clothes. Anything will do, really, but he also needs something suitable for the gala in case he needs to get in. There’s no Q or Moneypenny to arrange it for him, but he expects he might find himself as the plus one of his contact, if he plays his cards right. It’s always better to see and hear for himself, instead of relying on second-hand information.    
  
He’s just stepping outside of the Suit & Tuxedo Rental as his mobile beeps, announcing a message from his contact. Just in time, then.    
  
He arrives at the Ritz-Carlton dressed in a regular grey suit and a dark blue tie, feeling a tad underdressed among the glamorous crowd already gathering there in anticipation of the evening’s festivities. It’s a black tie affair, of course, and he’s prepared, but he’s not going to push the impression that he expects an invitation. It never works well.    
  
Officially, there are no rooms left on such a short notice, but he charms a favour out of the receptionist and she books him a suite on the top floor which had been fully reserved for the VIP gala attendees to guarantee privacy. He brings up all his stuff from the ridiculous rental Seat Ibiza he’d purposefully left far enough from the hotel’s entrance. He’s not currently enjoying the perks of MI6’s generous travel budget, so he has to save where he can. After a quick sweep for bugs and a security and escape plan, he spares a moment to appreciate the gorgeous, modern city view beyond the domed glass rooftops, the sleek design and a very inviting rooftop spa.    
  
Felix’s agent is waiting for him, lounging casually at the Bar in an elegant black and white dress and high heels, sipping a cocktail. Her sharp eyes focus on him immediately at the entry. She makes her way to him, all seductive sway of hips and the gorgeous veil of shiny dark hair lightly dancing in the breeze.   
  
“Well well, hello, handsome,” she all but purrs, “I see Felix was spot on. Pleased to meet you, I’m Paloma.” 

Interesting, my work seems to be done for me, it’s all too easy, Bond thinks as he shakes her hand, suddenly wary. 

“Charmed, I’m sure. What is it with fresh agents these days, so cautious with their identities. My name is Bond, James Bond.”  
  
“Would you like a drink? I’m buying,” she boldly asks, ignoring the jibe, and already starts back towards the bar.   
  
“A woman after my own heart,” Bond says, and follows her.   
  
They sit at a corner table away from any possible listeners and she begins by telling him about the research the CIA has had going on about a series of cyber attacks into US government’s classified China and Middle East intelligence. They had connected it to a loosely organised group of anarchists who in turn had dealings in weapons trade and development - mostly legal, but the money that had changed hands alluded to something much bigger than the small-time business the anarchists ran. Money trails led to Mexico and South America. That’s where the name of Michael Blake had started appearing. They could not, however, find any proof of money laundering or worse, and during one such wide-scale operation, the DS&T suffered a retaliation that left their servers down for two days. After all the systems were back up, data was missing, backups corrupted on activation and none of the previously detectable attacks resumed, yet files kept vanishing. Their ‘impenetrable’ firewalls were intact and gave no alerts.   
  
At this point, Bond knows very well where this is going to go.   
  
“So what is your objective here, exactly?” He asks, and a hopeful thought forms in his head, unbidden: maybe Q himself will be attending tonight.   
  
“To observe. Draw them out if I can and even establish connections. My cover is as close to the truth as possible; I’m a headhunter for a private security corporation, specializing in cyber threats and digital surveillance. No dead bodies--” she actually pouts, “but at least I get to party a little bit. Join me for the night?”  
  
“I’d be delighted, but I’m afraid I can’t promise no dead bodies.”  
  
“I won’t tell, if you won’t tell. Who keeps count anyway? As long as we catch them in the end.”  
  
“Oh, for sure we will. I never fail in my true interests.”  
  
He doesn’t say that his interest lies more in the line of making sure he gets to Q before the CIA does. The more he’s thought about it in the past few days, the more it’s obvious to him that Safin, Blake, the CIA, and whatever plot connects them - even Madeleine’s role in all of it - is secondary compared to that personal objective.   
  
He feels like he owes this to Q… for everything he did, and for the unease he felt after the rush of driving into the sunset with Madeleine in his newly assembled DB5 had faded.  
  
“Well then, it’s not a bad bargain!” She smiles at him and toasts with her half empty glass.  
  
He can’t bring himself to flirt back very convincingly, it seems, because Paloma frowns, takes a good look at him and asks,  
  
“Jetlagged?”  
  
“Not really, no. Just feeling the years, I guess.”  
  
“Ah, Felix told me about that. Said you might need a little bit of extra… motivation.”  
  
Bond laughs at that. Felix is a bastard, but she really is his type of a woman: young, gorgeous, bold, self-assertive -- deadly. The urge to take her up on her offer is there, of course it is. But in his mind’s eye he can already see how she looks lying on the bed naked in a pool of her own blood, gunshot wound to the head.  
  
“As enticing as that sounds, I think we better not get too cozy under the circumstances. In all likelihood, they already know I’m here. We got ambushed in Jamaica. More than a brief conversation will endanger your cover, as well as your life. We go in together, then split and you do your job, I do mine. I’ll text you a meeting point in the morning.”  
  
“You might draw them out, you mean? Pull their attention away from me. Excellent, that scenario would make my job a walk in the park.”  
  
Bond grins. “Let’s get ready, then.”  
  


  
* *

Bond is certain that neither Q nor Blake are among the guests when the shooting starts. He’s milling about, having small-talk with random guests, seemingly minding his own business, as they wait for the next speaker to claim the mic before the 8 pm scheduled dinner. Roughly 150 attendees are mostly seated in their tables or gathered around the speaker podium. None of them are paying any attention to him. Paloma isn’t so lucky.    
  
Four men surround her seemingly from nowhere. She reacts too late, standing up from her seat at a table and weaves her way through flower arrangements and decor towards the exit. Petals scatter and leaves tear apart as she suddenly sprints and the men pull out their semi-automatics and start shooting.    
  
Bond is fast and still passably accurate, although lacking by his own standards. He manages to fell two of the assassins, but neither one is dead. Paloma ducks behind a pillar and pulls her own gun from her purse, but she’s no match with a single standard-issue Glock 17 the CIA sends their regular field agents out with. Bond dives after one of the thugs he shot, kicking the gun from his hands barely in time before it’s leveled at him. He grabs it and throws it in the general direction of his fellow agent, hoping that Paloma gets a chance to retrieve it. He distracts her pursuers by shooting at a fire extinguisher in the ceiling, and a spray of cold water hits them all as they activate. Paloma gets her hands on the AR57 and from then on, it’s a dance macabre. Bond can only stare. She mows down the two attackers still standing, giving Bond an opportunity to strip his other gravely wounded victim of the two MAC-10’s he was packing. The screaming and shattering of glass barely registers in his consciousness as people flee, But then there are more men in combat gear pouring in from the main entrance.    
  
“Time to go!” He shouts at Paloma, who empties her magazine into the wall of flesh and protective equipment that barrels towards them. Only a few of the men fall, but they’re slowed down enough that when the first one makes a grab for her, she manages to dislodge his hold with a square kick to the stomach and an elbow to his face.    
  
“No, it’s time to die!” one of the incoming reinforcements yells, and pulls the pin from a grenade. Bond dives for cover, too far from Paloma to do anything about shielding her.    
  
The blast knocks over the table he used for cover and brings down debris from the ceiling. Bond tries to get a visual of Paloma among the dust and rubble and water spray, and finds her just in time to see a man pull a gun to her head. She comes to a standstill, breathing heavily.    
  
Bond knows these kinds of operations. Capture or kill. If the first option fails, the second is nearly as good. They walked straight into a trap. There is no time to think.   
  
He reaches for one of the confiscated MAC10’s and fires a few quick rounds at the heads of the one holding Paloma at gunpoint and the closest man next to him. Luckily they both drop dead and Paloma has grabbed another grenade and launched it at the feet of the rest in a space of a heartbeat. She hurls herself towards Bond, stepping over bodies as the blast brings down more of the ceiling and destroys part of the hallway and the main entrance.   
  
He grabs her hand and they make a run for it. A hailstorm of bullets rages around them, shattering what windows had remained intact. Rushing through the doorway, Bond barely manages to avoid a collision with a man in a spotless tux, calmly entering the destroyed lobby. He catches a glimpse of piercing dark eyes and a scarred jaw line, but the moment is gone, lost in the chaos.   
  
Taking a detour through the garden, they arrive at Bond’s rental car a little worse for wear. Neither cares about the state their blood-stained, wet and dusty clothes are going to leave the interior - the car is an abomination anyway - but Bond is a little miffed about the prospect of returning his destroyed tux. Paloma laughs near-hysterically at her inconveniently torn sleek, dark blue evening dress. Bond only raises an eyebrow at her half-exposed ass cheek.    
  
He drives them to his previous hotel, a dingy little establishment, but unsuspicious and out-of-the-way enough to possibly stay off the radar of anyone looking for them.    
  
Not that they’d attribute the Seat Ibiza to James Bond.    
  
They have barely made it inside their room as Paloma kisses him, pressing him hard back against the door. The filthy clothes need to go, and Bond assists her in tearing them off one another. “Shower”, he mouths against her neck, and she nods, both of them scrambling into the small enclosure. It’s a sort of heaven, to wash off the dirt, and altogether different bliss to feel her warm hands sliding on his skin. It’s nowhere near the best sex he’s ever had, but at least it lets him unwind a little and purges Madeleine from his system at last.    
  
* *

“Did you find out anything new?” He asks her the next morning, before they have enough energy to get up.    
  
“Very little. I was hoping for some names. I don't suppose you have a list of aliases for your former Quartermaster?”   
  
“Of course I do. I also know he won’t be using any of those. And if he did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Why not? I thought you were going to catch him.”   
  
“I’m going to find him. There’s a difference.”

“You don’t think he’s responsible?”   
  
“For cyber terrorism? No. For hacking the CIA? Absolutely.”   
  
She narrows her eyes at him, suspicious.   
  
“He would never side with terrorists. Never. There’s got to be something else to it. If he’s ever found, it’s because he wants to be.”   
  
“The CIA can’t afford him the benefit of the doubt. No more than any other wanted criminal.”   
  
Bond bristles at that.   
  
“That’s why I wouldn’t tell you. Q’s not a villain. If anything, I’d call him a hero.”   
  
“That can be one and the same. Just a difference of perspective.”   
  
“Well, my perspective tells me to contact MI6. If you still won’t accept that you need them in on this, I suggest you keep to your side, namely tracking Blake and his connections and I look into Q. He’s the one man capable of taking over the world with nothing but his laptop and a cup of Earl Grey. Do you really think he would play second fiddle to a middleman like Blake? Or even Safin, in comparison with Blofeld? He’s already beaten them in their own game once.”   
  
“Hmm… you do what you do best, Bond, and chase single-mindedly after one objective. I will return to HQ for now and follow other leads. We have plenty. If Safin really is as big as Miss Swann seemed to think, then we need to branch out.”   
  
He waits a while after seeing Paloma safely into a taxi, packs his meager belongings in the rental car, leaves the tux hanging on the door handle of the rental shop with a wad of money in the pocket, and dials Moneypenny’s number from memory.

* *   
  
“ _ James! I can’t believe it! _ ”   
  
“It’s me alright. Alive and kicking.”   
  
“ _ You know, I expected you’d take your sweet time, but nearly five years since we’ve talked looks like avoiding it _ .”   
  
“I have no excuses. I’ve made mistakes. But it’s lovely to hear your voice, Eve.”

“ _ So what prompted you to call? _ ”

“Q.”   
  
“ _ What! You mean… Do you know where he-- is he with you? _ ”   
  
“No.” Bond can hardly mask the disappointment in his voice. “But I was hoping you knew.”   
  
“ _ Is this line secure? _ ”   
  
“I would hope so. Courtesy of Leiter.”   
  
“ _ Oh my god. I knew it. The way he left… Is he in trouble? What do the Americans want with him? _ ”   
  
“They believe he’s hacked them. Multiple times. And there are connections… to SPECTRE, even. It’s complicated. I need to talk to you, Eve. This could be bad.”   
  
“ _ Where are you? _ ”   
  
“Santiago, Chile. Heading to the Airport.”   
  
“ _ Alright. Send me your flight details. I’ll be there to pick you up. I’ll call you back in a moment. _ ”   
  
“Thank you. I mean it. You’re a darling.”   
  
He disconnects the call, finds the first possible flight to London and makes the unfortunate Seat Ibiza wail in protest as it’s pushed past its limits. The aggravating sound makes him lament the fate of his beloved DB5, but not show the poor vehicle any kind of mercy.   
  



	3. Chapter 3

Bond’s plane lands at Heathrow three minutes early. His legs feel like jello, walking along the endless corridors after 14 hours on the plane. His head is a pandemonium of thoughts and feelings but he’s too tired to process them, despite napping a couple of hours mid-flight. He’d left the hotel around 10 am, boarded the plane a couple of hours later, and now it’s early morning in London, halfway across the globe.    
  
Too early for the sight that greets him at the arrivals gate. There’s Eve Moneypenny, smiling and waving shortly in greeting, impeccably dressed and radiant as always -- and standing next to her, Gareth Mallory, staring him down stone-faced and dangerous.    
  
M, since the passing of Olivia Mansfield, had never truly intimidated him, until now. 

Why, Eve, you  _ traitor _ , he thinks, and almost growls aloud. 

He had of course thought about informing MI6 of the situation eventually. He fully expected to have to go through M and request resources. But he’d wanted to talk it through with Eve first, not to be ambushed on arrival like a fugitive; like he was a suspect as much as an informant.    
  
He wants them on his side, to find Q and bring him back safely. Before the CIA can get their hands on him. Before anything escalates. It’s obvious now that it’s not going to go that smoothly. M might even decide to take it off his hands completely.   
  
She has the grace to look a little sheepish. “Hello, James. I’ve missed you,” she says, forgoing a formal handshake for a brief hug.    
  
“Likewise,” Bond says as Moneypenny releases him to greet M more formally, and offers politely, “It’s been too long, sir.”   
  
Mallory’s handshake is as firm as the look he levels at his former agent. “Bond. I expect you have sensitive intel.”   
  
“Indeed. Can we go somewhere more private for that?”   
  
“I have cleared my schedule for the morning, my office is free.” Mallory offers.    
  
They call for the driver and he picks them up in a familiar black company car. M sits in front, Bond gestures for Eve to climb in the backseat and follows her in. They drive on in silence and Bond lets his gaze wander along the familiar landscapes. Deep down he feels that he has finally come back home. These people are the only ones he owes any loyalty to, in addition to Felix. Even Mallory, despite his stony countenance, has shown him a measure of trust after all this time by coming to meet him in person. 

Or, Bond muses, not completely baselessly, he probably did it to ensure Bond wouldn’t sway Eve to some reckless scheme before Six could bring him to heel.    
  
Either way, Mallory’s presence isn’t altogether unwanted, despite his first gut reaction. At least he’s spared of having to explain everything twice, trying to convince first Eve, then M. 

There is nothing but an empty slot remaining of the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross. The Intelligence and Security Committee had initially made plans to rebuild it. Later it had become apparent that the project would be stuck in the wheels of bureaucracy until an unseeable future and the couple of years after Skyfall that they’d inhabited temporary facilities had stretched into many more with no end in sight. It was sad, really. Of all the ruins left behind by Silva and Blofeldt, this empty spot of land on the bank of Thames resonates within him the most. The Whitehall offices simply aren’t the same as MI6 to him. 

Too many things have changed, but some have stayed exactly the same. Tight security and unreasonably stiff adherence to protocols remain one of those.   
  
They go in together, the three of them, and Bond has to give his full name and flash an ID to the concierge upon entrance. He’s not amused, although Eve snickers and even Mallory’s mouth curves into a slight lopsided smile. There are no friendly nods or lingering looks as he walks on. His presence commands no attention save for an occasional passing glance reserved for an intruding stranger.    
  
There’s nothing that he hasn’t given of himself fully to the service, yet apparently his legacy has crumbled into shadows and dust together with the last remains of the old building.    
  
But there’s no time for reflection, as M escorts them into his office and closes the heavy wooden door behind them.    
  
It’s a somber conversation, and Bond is relieved that he doesn’t need to do much convincing at all. Apparently Moneypenny has filled M in on what she’d been told during the time it took Bond to get to London. There’s a sort of practised ease in their communication that’s not lost on Bond as he observes them discussing the necessary measures and how to go about finding Q. He misses it, how he used to be a part of the team. Strange, considering his penchant for going solo.   
  
However, his premonitions are proven right when they arrive at the topic of what to do once the objective of locating their target (Bond bristles at that) is reached:   
  
“We can’t overlook the possibility that Shaw is a threat. If that’s the case and he is aware that he’s being pursued, we become more vulnerable than ever.”   
  
“True, but with all due respect, sir, I think that scenario is baseless. There is no evidence of him acting against the interests of MI6, or England. We all knew him well enough to trust him with our lives. He would never turn on us.”   
  
“Given the right incentive, he could be worse than Silva. His knowledge is more extensive and his position allowed him a good understanding of the inner workings of our national security even beyond MI6.” M looks unsure, something Bond doesn’t remember seeing much. “He could cause damage beyond our worst nightmares without anyone even noticing until it’s too late. We could already be running headfirst into a trap.”   
  
“I did ask Q once if he’d ever thought about taking over the world,” Bond muses, “he said he already had, in all the ways that matter to him.”   
  
“You mean he’s not ambitious?” M asks, clearly not convinced.    
  
“I mean he’s not delusional. Or inclined to indulge my sense of humor,” Bond counters. “And that’s just the most obvious part of it. Now, according to Madeleine, the SPECTRE connection is much more straight-forward than the CIA thought. It’s not just some hacked files. Blake is nothing but an errand boy of a shady business angel who goes by the name of Safin. Safin is literally a rogue SPECTRE agent. Whatever Q’s agenda is, it’s definitely not to side with those people.”   
  
Moneypenny gasps, “You think he’s gone on a mad crusade to expose them? Bring them down?”   
  
“I’ll be damned if he’s taken a page out of Bond’s book,” Mallory mutters thoughtfully. “It could be a possibility. Or he could be blackmailed to work for them. I’ve read through his personnel file again, it looks like he’s been very sparse in the personal information he’s provided even though the initial vetting was very thorough.”   
  
“Bond, how well did you really know him? Can you think of anything or anyone that could be used as a leverage in such a way?” Moneypenny asks him.   
  
“Not well enough, it seems. I don’t like answering personal questions, I keep from asking them.”   
  
“Any loved ones that could be threatened?” She goes on wondering. “I don’t think he ever mentioned a partner, or a family member for that matter. I got the impression he didn’t want to talk about his family. I don’t think they were close.”   
  
“He’d kill for his cats, I suppose.” Bond cannot resist, and Eve gives him a dirty glare. 

She digs into the background check files provided by M; the only one of them with clearance.

“Next of kin is his mother, who lives in Birmingham. Divorced three times, currently single. Owns a tattoo studio - oh, wow. I didn’t know that,” she wonders aloud. “There’s a record of her changing her name completely once, unrelated to marriage or divorce. That would have been when he was three years old. No record of a biological father. Looks like he was raised by Ms. Peterson’s second husband until the age of nine.”   
  
M frowns and points out, “Those files are nearly ten years old. We can’t be sure anything in there is still accurate, or trustworthy in the first place. It doesn’t look like anything has been tampered with, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Don’t forget that we are talking about a man who has killed on command as surely as any of you Double-Os, even if he isn’t the one pulling the trigger. One could say he’s got all the blood of our field agents’ kills on his hands. Now the only thing controlling that lethal force is his moral compass. Let’s hope it’s not broken.”   
  
“I trust him with my life. That’s all I can say.” Moneypenny offers.   
  
“As do I,” Bond declares, and he’s infinitely thankful for Eve’s unwavering support as he sees Mallory’s gaze settle on her as he slowly nods.    
  
“Alright then. I choose to trust  _ you _ . Commander Bond, I will have you assist MI6 in an operation of retrieving our former Quartermaster and bringing him in for questioning. It goes without saying that we  _ do not _ have an official mandate for your involvement yet, so keep it low-key. I will deal with the higher-ups depending on what you can dig up. Considering the sensitive and potentially dangerous nature of this mission, I will assign a Double-O agent as your partner and you will have both R and myself as your active contacts in HQ. None of the other personnel will be informed at this point, except for Tanner. We don’t know how badly we are compromised internally. Our first priority is to bring Shaw in, but as a secondary objective you are to gather any intelligence you can and stop any hostile operations you might encounter with any means necessary. I can’t be any more specific at this point, you understand. You will all be briefed here in my office in two hours. Don’t be late.”   
  
“So, essentially you’re granting me a licence?”   
  
“You’ll be going in with a Double-O. I don’t think you’ll need one.”

Bond shrugs. “Well. It did all start to sound too good to be true. I guess I can find the time to call you while being shot at before I squeeze the trigger. A rookie agent tagging along might be a bigger hindrance.”   
  
“I’m warning you, Bond.You’re no longer our agent and I have no obligation to agree to any of this. I’m giving you almost free rein to use our resources and intelligence. Don’t abuse the favours you’re given.”   
  
“Understood. Thank you, sir.” Bond nods at M and leaves. It did go better than he’d feared, but being stuck with another agent wasn’t part of the plan. However, he does recognise the need to be more discreet about this than what used to be his usual modus operandi. He wonders briefly what the CIA cleanup crew made of the Santiago body count.   
  
* *   
  
Moneypenny follows after Bond, but before she makes it to the door, Mallory interrupts her, lowering his voice.   
  
“Eve. I mean, Ms. Moneypenny,” he corrects himself - he’s started to slip with that and it’s not doing anyone any good. “I have a task for you. Absolutely confidential. You can’t tell anyone, especially not Bond. Find out what you can about Madeleine Swann, track her movements if possible. I’ll leave the details to you.”   
  
“You'd have me go out in the field?”   
  
“If it’s necessary. If you are willing?”   
  
“Of course.” She smiles, excited. “I need to reschedule and delegate, but it’s not a problem. I seem to have many personal errands to run this week.”   
  
“Be careful.” 

“Always.” She exits, still smiling, goes to her desk and opens her laptop just like any other morning. 

I’m the one who should be more careful, Mallory thinks. 

He sighs and closes the door between them decisively. He goes to the liquor cabinet, pours himself a shot of expensive scotch instead of a morning coffee, and sits down behind his desk. This is what he’s become, he thinks grimly. His personal mobile vibrates in his pocket, but he decides to ignore it. It vibrates again and his annoyance flares; for a moment he contemplates tossing it out of the closest window but settles on blocking the number and deleting it from his contacts.


	4. Chapter 4

Cat is not impressed. Long hours spent home alone bored to death at least gave her a chance to amuse herself in a plethora of ways that inevitably yielded satisfying reactions from both Kitty and their human servant. Now, after their relocation to Dubai and being appointed the Evil Overlord (--lady? Is there such a thing?) of the Intelscape offices, her work days always begin and end with being stuffed into a box. The Evil Mastermind part of her contract barely seems to make up for it.    
  
Q (Shaw, but he never thinks of himself by that name, even now,) has scratches all over his hands, but he refuses to leave the cats alone anymore if he absolutely doesn’t have to. Bringing them to work at MI6 was out of the question. Here, nobody cares. Except the customs at the airport, despite his very diligent attention to necessary paperwork. Who knew getting cats through customs was more difficult than it was with guns and agents with false passports?   
  
He’s ready to go home for the evening, having successfully wrangled both Cat and Kitty into their boxes, when Blake waltzes into his office with takeout containers. It’s a bit of a complication to his plans.   
  
“Mike, what are you--”   
  
“Hey, Ben! I thought you had the evening off. We could go for a flight. There’s the new helo ready for us in the airfield. They tested the artillery in-flight today. I asked Saeed and his techs to leave it out for us.”   
  
“Sorry to disappoint, but I really don’t feel like it today. You know it takes a lot out of me on the best days. Today’s not one of the best,” he says, rubbing at his temples. It’s true: a nasty headache is lurking there just waiting for the effects of ibuprofen to fade. And despite Blake’s best efforts and enthusiasm, he has never been quite able to coax Q out of his flying anxiety. He can and will fly, even gets a thrill out of personally testing some of his modifications. But he won’t let anyone know how much he really  _ doesn’t like it _ .    
  
“Aww, C’mon, man! I brought you some dinner. Let’s eat, you’ll feel better and we can make it just a short round. You won’t have to do anything, just sit back and relax.”   
  
“I have reports to go through on the data mining project. There was a glitch in the AI that needs to be addressed. Jen and Nadya fixed it, but that asshole Omar kept taking all the credit again. He’s being insufferable to the point that it affects everyone’s work. I’m going to put him in his place.”   
  
“Don’t you ever get tired of trying to fix all the world’s problems? It’s not like any of that’s your problem. Bigger fish to catch, bro.”   
  
“I’m tired. Thanks for the food, I’ll pay you back. Now, if you don’t mind--”   
  
He makes his way past the man and out of the office, Cat yowling loudly in protest as he grabs the boxes with more force than necessary. Kitty’s silently crouching in the farthest corner, staring at him accusingly with fearful eyes round as saucers.    
  
He can’t wait to be back in London again. He absolutely  _ hates  _ all the moving back and forth that comes with the job, but he can’t do anything about it. Not right now. There are bigger fish to catch, indeed. He’s just about to throw the net.   
  
His sleek, dark blue Aston Martin DB11 is the single best thing to come out of working for Safin. With all of its custom features, it’s worth more than his apartment in London, and it’s worth every penny. While the cats despise the daily drive to work, Q himself has come to enjoy it. The car fits right in here, in the oil-rich metal splendour that is the tech capital of the UAE. As he parks it in his spot in the fenced backyard of his building, he thinks of how different it would be to drive it on the streets of London. He’s still not quite comfortable driving on the right side. If he ever gets the car brought to London, he’ll make the adjustments.    
  
He opens the heavily security-proofed door to his flat, instinctively hating the empty space and stacked boxes and an unpacked suitcase that greet him upon entrance. He releases the cats from their carriers and they immediately retreat to their beds; the one unnecessary luxury he’d bothered with, as he’s really trying to be a better cat owner. The car doesn’t count.

The massive assembly of servers, laptops, tablets and screens that Q himself retreats to counts as the most important absolute necessity he’d brought over. It has nothing and everything to do with Intelscape Engineering, officially his employer and one of the many businesses through which Safin manages his operations.

Truthfully, although being as far away from London as possible had felt liberating at first, the change of scenery had done nothing to make his workload healthier to manage compared to his time as Q. Not if you counted all the work he did off the clock, anyway. 

The only difference is that this time Q (because that’s who he is, dammit) has almost unlimited resources at his disposal. And that means he can’t let go of either opportunity - to strive to bring into reality all the ideas he’s ever had that seemed like an impossibility before - and try to bring down the immensely frightening, complicated system that makes them possible. It’s a strange paradox.

His private detective work and late night hacking marathons, data mining with the help of his new AI tech and good old-fashioned thinking while too tired have so far yielded a list of conclusions that are Q’s best kept secret. They include, but are not limited to:

\- SPECTRE still has active cells which can be tracked down and destroyed. Most of them have connections to the Nine Eyes countries including the UK.

\- Safin is genuinely after SPECTRE, but the logic of it still eludes him.    
  
\- For all his intellect, Safin is a very, very disturbed individual and not to be trusted in anything he says or does.

\- Safin’s fixation on weapons of mass destruction goes beyond academic interest. ‘Obsession’ might be a more fitting term. It’s disconcerting, considering his other machinations...   
  
\- Safin has a seemingly endless list of associates, operation bases and safe locations around the world. He’s still just one man, and one man can be fooled.

\- Russia may be bad, but it’s also the only nuclear state that hasn’t given the launch codes over to total morons. It’s debatable whether that makes them more or less dangerous. Q likens Safin in his mind to Putin, Trump and Kim Jong-un, and he really can’t pick a side.   
  
\- Ghost ships exist. Point Nemo proves it. Q thinks it is the ghost of Nine Eyes, stolen from SPECTRE and trapped in a moving, waterborne coffin.   
  
\- Both the CIA and Pentagon are useless against cyber threats, he really should give them a few tips!

\- His work at MI6 was stellar. He can’t hack his own systems without authorised access. Yes, he’s tried.    
  
\- Mallory might have raised his suspicions, but even without MI6 access, he’s found out enough to prove that his former boss is nothing but a good guy in a bad situation and it was shitty of him to even think otherwise.    
  
\- Mallory is in fact in deep shit. Funny, that, in a way.

\- Also, he needs to give GCHQ some pointers too.   
  
\- Finley from RAF  _ will _ be in deep shit for sabotaging their joint project, ultimately leading to its cancellation.   
  
\- His replacement’s real name is Dick McPhail, from GCHQ. Apparently the man has lived up to his name. He’s never laughed so hard in his life.   
  
\- Blake.... is actually a good friend. As is Jen, and Saeed and a few others. Good people exist in bad places and compromising situations. It’s a thought that doesn’t leave him alone.   
  
\- Bond would hate Blake for existing. Q hates himself a little bit for thinking it.   
  
\- Bond would blow the place up spectacularly. That’s.... not exactly useful intel he’s gathered, either.    
  
\- He should contact Eve. He has enough hard evidence.    
  
\- Bond’s Smart Blood is good for nothing. He’s checked - multiple times. Just in case it acts like an almost dead battery, giving off an odd spark every now and then if tried again after some rest. It doesn’t.   
  
\- He can’t find records of Bond’s death, therefore he chooses to believe he’s alive. He could be wrong.   
  
\- If anyone ever gets it into their head to visit his home either here or back in London, he’s in trouble.   
  
\- He wishes Bond would. Visit, that is. What a stupid idea.   
  
\- If Bond were here, things would be much more simple. Funny that, how a perspective can change. He would have never thought so before.    
  
\- He  _ still _ misses Bond, period.   
  
\- He should never, ever think while too tired.

Tomorrow. He will do it tomorrow. It’s a bitter pill that has to be swallowed to forward all of his work to storage servers at GCHQ and let them handle it. He has a way in and out without being detected, but they will eventually notice the files that don’t belong there, and he needs to act fast. He’ll let Moneypenny know that the data is there. He’ll use one of his old encryption protocols that someone trustworthy will be able to decrypt. Eve hopefully knows who to inform. It’s not wholly without risks, but even if he doesn’t make it out of here, there will be a good chance that Six will get from it what they need to stop Safin at least.    
  
He finally finishes compressing and encrypting the files well past midnight and goes to bed, knowing that he won’t be getting any proper sleep. He contemplates the benefits of soporifics but doesn’t dare to fog his brain. He needs to be alert and in top form tomorrow. It will be a day of setting his plans in motion.    
  
Kitty jumps on the bed and walks up the length of his body on light paws, settling comfortably on his chest. The small weight is comforting, and Q is suddenly moved close to tears. He’s about to put his life on the line, and all he can think of is who will take care of the cats if it goes tits up?   
  
Jen, he decides then and there. Even if she were a knowing, willing accomplice in all of Safin’s nefarious plans, she would never harm the cats.    
  
There’s a ping from his neural network AI that runs 24/7 analysis on the continuous data stream that his servers here and back in England collect, sort and store.    
  
Q is up again in a heartbeat. There are only a handful of matches that warrant instant notification.    
  
This one is a match of three such categories: CIA_ongoing, MI6_personnel and Bond_James.

He opens one grainy, pixelated CCTV clip from a surveillance cam in the Ritz-Carlton hotel, Santiago de Chile. It’s dated three days ago.

“Dear God”, he exhales, “I am going to die.”

* *   
  
The alarm wakes Q just when he’s finally drifted to sleep. He’s out of the bed and making tea in a minute, without any of his normal sleep deprivation related sluggishness. Adrenaline chases away any remnants of tiredness as he dresses and takes care of his morning routine.    
  
When the expensive Earl Grey is steeped to his liking (strong, sugary, no milk) he sits at the small table and activates the unused phone and a prepaid SIM card he’d bought and modified a few days prior for this - and only this - purpose.    
  
He types a simple SMS message -  _ GOTCHA! _ \- and sends it to one of Safin’s personal mobiles, hoping that he’s carrying it, wherever he is.    
  
A few very long minutes pass. Then, there’s an answering  _ ping,  _ and a message that reads only  24°55'23.4"S 87°22'28.9"W   
  
Safin has opened his message, causing it to automatically delete before being seen and sending back an undetectable signal tracking the exact location.    
  
Point Nemo is on the move.    
  
He starts the file transfer to GCHQ storage servers, and picks up the phone again, imagining Safin’s confused face as he tries to find out what just happened.   
  
He types in the coordinates and GCHQ / CSO / SECT.2.04.UNIT108 and sends it to Eve’s private number that belongs to her Nokia 7 Plus that he’d personally customised for her a couple of years ago. If she’s updated to a newer model since then, he can only hope that she’s kept the number.    
  
He receives an SMS back less than 10 seconds later.    
  
_ Q? _ _   
_ _   
_ It brings a smile to his lips. He deactivates the phone without answering and smashes it to pieces with a frying pan. Then he stuffs the cats into their carriers, switches off the lights and all the electronics save for the servers still working on forwarding data, packs his main laptop and a selection of passports for him and his cats, and various other paperwork into his bag, and drives to the Intelscape building to start a new work day.    
  
He leaves the Aston on the 6th floor of the garage, his usual spot, stuffing his work tablet and phone in the glove compartment. They can be tracked, but that could also prove useful. Acutely aware of all the security cameras around the premises, he tries to make his way casually inside the building and down a couple of flights to the computer labs.

“Jen. I was hoping to find you here,” he says as he enters her usual workspace, only a little short of breath.    
  
“Ben!” she flashes him a bright smile, instantly peering into the cat boxes he’s still carrying. “Oooh, you brought my darlings! Cat doesn’t look too happy.”   
  
“Yeah. She never does. I have a favour to ask you. I need to deal with some personal matters that require me to travel again. Would you mind looking after them for a while?”   
  
“Not at all, I’ll just let Mike know so that when he comes home he won’t accidentally let them out.”   
  
“About that. Listen. I know this might sound crazy but you must absolutely not tell  _ anyone _ that you have them. Not even Mike. Not today, that is. I’m giving you the day off. Go home now, take my girls with you and don’t talk to anyone, is that clear?”   
  
She’s gone pale and stiff, staring at him with frightened eyes.    
  
“You’re a fucking spy after all, aren’t you? I fucking knew it, what are you, MI6?”   
  
“No. Nothing like that. Not exactly.” He tries to remain calm and talk in soothing tones, but her anxiety is very contagious, considering the agitated mood he’s been in from the moment he woke up.    
  
“But, I can tell you this: you, and Mike too, you’re both in danger simply by association with me. I will reschedule your projects for today and the rest of the week before I go. Don't come to work tomorrow, no matter what happens. If Mike doesn’t come home tonight, flee the city.”   
  
“Oh my God!” She breaks down in tears and covers her mouth with her hands to muffle the sounds of her crying. “Please tell me he’s going to be okay!”   
  
“I can’t make promises, Jen, I’m so sorry. But I will do what I can to get you both out. Wait for a word from me. You do mean a lot to me, believe it or not.”   
  
She sniffs, composing herself.   
  
“What about the cats?”   
  
“I would never leave my darlings behind. Just trust me.”   
  
Q hands the boxes over and sits down at one of the computers, opening their weekly schedules and typing in the changes, altering the timestamps to hide the new updates from immediate recognition.   
  
“Go! Shoo!” He urges Jen, who stands frozen in front of him. She departs then, putting a rather good impression of a smile on her face and cooing to the cats as she goes.   
  
Q logs out of the system then, signing in to his hidden network, and pulls up the status of the connection to his home servers. They’re all showing blank.   
  
It’s done, then. Data transfer complete, self-destruction executed. He quickly types in a few lines of code that should close the breach he’s used to mirror the Intelscape data to his personal devices, but right then his screen freezes and goes black. The computer right next to it comes alive with a scrollbar over the screen;  _ SECURITY BREACH LEVEL 12 _ _   
_   
“Well, shit,” he breathes out, grabbing his messenger bag and throwing in a power bank, a couple of usb sticks, an external drive and cables with different adapters to accompany his laptop. Then he walks, with self-control that Bond would be proud of, to the prototype lab, happily greets the engineers working there, and purposefully strolls to the gun rack on the far wall. He picks up a modified  Beretta PX4 Storm Compact, shows it to Saeed, who’s their ballistics specialist, and asks,“Mind if I borrow this beauty for a day or two? The new hollow tips came in yesterday and I want to do some testing.”   
  
Saeed nods distractedly and none of the other men in the room even acknowledge his presence. Q makes a quick exit and stashes the gun under his waistband. It bulges a little under his shirt and he feels a frisson of fear running down his spine as he starts the walk to the lift. If he makes it to the car, there are still a hundred ways this could go south, but at least he’s done everything he needs to accomplish here.   
  
He doesn’t get as far as the next corridor.   
  
“Ben! What’s the hurry? Good thing I wasn’t carrying my morning coffee!” Blake exclaims, as Q nearly runs into him as the other man steps out of his office. “There’s something weird going on in the systems.”   
  
“Oh, goddamn, Mike! You scared the shit out of me. Come on, we need to talk.”   
  
Q ushers him back into his office and closes the door. Then, swiftly as a trained killer, he pulls the gun on him.    
  
“Holy shit! What are you--”

“Shut up. Put your hands where I can see them. Good. Now, back off, stand in the middle of the room, there you go.”   
  
A desktop screen flares to life on the table, warnings scrolling across the screen.   
  
_ SECURITY BREACH LEVEL 12 _ _   
_ _ SECURITY BREACH LEVEL 1 _ _   
_ _ LOCKDOWN LEVEL 1 _ _   
_ _ SECURITY BREACH LEVEL 2 _ _   
_ _ SECURITY BREACH LEVEL 3 _ _   
_ _ LOCKDOWN LEVEL 2 SECTOR 1 SECTOR 2 SECTOR 3 _ _   
_ _   
_ Blake’s mobile rings, and Q shakes his head _ no _ .  _   
_ _   
_ “Alright. I’m going to ask you a few questions. Answer carefully, because if I think you are lying to me I  _ will _ shoot.”   
  
Blake, who is always confident and jovial like a door-to-door salesman, looks at him squarely in the eye, betraying no fear or agitation, absolutely serious for once. He keeps his hands visible and nods slowly. That’s training right there, Q notes. Interesting.

“If you had  _ me _ at gunpoint right now, would you pull the trigger?”   
  
“No. They’re all your creations. I’d assume it would probably explode in my face.”   
  
Q smiles, it morphs into a feral grin that feels strange on his face. 

“Well thought. Now, think fast: there are going to be guards swarming these hallways in just a few minutes. What will you do?”   
  
“Whatever you tell me to.”   
  
Q narrows his eyes at that, considering. Blake waits, then speaks up:   
  
“I know Safin is planning something… unusual. Something I’m not sure I’m willing to be a part of.”   
  
Q nods. “You could say that. If you help me, I can get you both out, Jen and you. If you won’t… I don’t have a choice.”   
  
“Would you really kill me, Ben?”   
  
“I’ve done worse, believe me.”

Blake’s cool facade is starting to crack. He believes, alright.   
  
“Shit. Shit, I was gonna talk about it with you. My suspicions about Safin’s operations. Point Nemo. Fuck. Yes, I’m with you.” He laughs, a nervous sound that conveys no relief. The facade is gone.   
  
Q lowers the gun.   
  
“Grab yours, then, I know you keep a gun here. And anything else you think you might need and can easily carry.”   
  
While Blake rushes to obey the order, Q has an idea. “Mike, log in for me, I’m blocked and we don’t have the time for a break-in. I’m giving us a few extra moments.”   
  
Blake does as he’s told, letting Q take over, and it takes only a few seconds as he remotely jams a couple of doors, bypasses the Level 1 lockdown and rigs an alarm to go off at the west entrance.   
  
“We’ll watch each other’s backs, keep talking like we’re investigating the security breaches, head to the maintenance tunnels. There might be a vehicle we could borrow and exit through the east gates.”   
  
They head out to the open office space and walk briskly past modern cubicles lining the hallways, neither having to fake the alarm in their voices and gestures as they engage in appropriate meaningless techno-babble. There are sirens wailing at the far end of the complex, and people running to and from the noise.   
  
They are down to the third floor, when there is a sound of shock-proof glass panes exploding to pieces and more alarms going off. People scramble from their workspaces and then the power goes out.    



	5. Chapter 5

“James, James, James… little brother in need of advice, I heard?” 

Blofeld sneers at Bond from behind the barrier of his see-through interrogation cell. Hands cuffed in front of him, dressed in a beige uniform, sitting in a relaxed hunch, he looks harmless. The eye he’d lost years ago has scarred over and the scars have faded from the angry red Bond remembers to pale pink.There are a few more lines on his face, just as there are on his own.    
  
“It wasn’t my intention to ever see you again,” Bond replies, “but as you are apparently  _ the greatest asset this country has _ \--” He glares at M over his shoulder, “they thought we could persuade you to part with some information.”   
  
“What sort of information would you be after, then?”

“Safin.”

There’s an eerie quiet for a moment, as a wide smile spreads over Blofeld’s features. It chills Bond to the bone.   
  
He’s still not quite over his personal trauma.   
  
“And as before, here I am again, your future hanging on my word. Tell me, how does it feel: finally on the same side as brothers ought to be, your enemy is my enemy. But as always, I am the only one with the means to your ends?”   
  
“That’s where you are wrong. Did you really think your value to us is tied to the information you hold?”   
  
“Then why are you here?”   
  
“Let’s just say it’s in your best interest to help us find him.”   
  
“I have been locked up for five years, what makes you think I know?” 

Blofeld is having the time of his life, Bond thinks. A cruel smile spreads on his face as he levels a condescending look at Bond. “Afterall, you already had someone on your side who knows him much better than I do. Did you fuck that up, too?”   
  
“I didn’t come here for your mind games,” Bond grinds out, “I want a location. Now.”   
  
“I suggest you ask your beloved Madeleine that.”   
  
It’s Mallory’s cool gaze fixed on him that keeps Bond from reacting.   
  
“We can feed you to Safin on a silver plate right before we take him out, if that’s what you want. Make him come to us.  _ That’s _ what I’m talking about.”    
  
“Now, now, brother dear, there is no need to be getting mad. I will give you a starting point to your little game of cat and mouse. It should prove interesting.”   
  
“I knew he’d see reason.” Mallory pulls out a voice recorder, holding it out towards Blofeld. “Let’s hear it.”

* *   
  
Late that night, Bond is boarding a flight to Dubai.   
  
He’s thankful for his seat in the business class, even though it’s still crowded. He’s sitting side by side with Double-O-bloody-Seven.    
  
_ The world’s moved on, Commander Bond. _ Indeed it has, and he’s having a little bit of an existential crisis, trying to catch up to it.    
  
She looks formidable. She wears the expensive pantsuit and danger like a true Double-O, but there’s a smoothness to her that betrays the lack of years in the service. The lack of first-hand experience of what life of a field agent had been like for the female agents of Bond’s generation.  _ Softness  _ would be an absolutely wrong term, though. There’s nothing soft, nothing yielding about her. She’s all business with him. And yet, she says things like:   
  
“I gather you knew him pretty well, the way you talk about him?”   
  
“I did, relatively speaking, I could say. Worked with him for about three years.”   
  
“I only had him on the comms twice. I was four months in, when he resigned. What was he like -- I mean, as a person?”   
  
“Loyal.” He could have said many things, and it surprises Bond a little, the first thing that comes to mind.   
  
“Hmm. I think he never liked me much.”   
  
“Why do you think that?”   
  
“I don’t know, just a feeling. He was always very short with me. Not impolite or unkind, just… maybe I fell short of his expectations.”   
  
“He could be rather unreasonable about returning his equipment.”   
  
“I don’t think that was it”, Nomi says, and looks at Bond in a way that makes him feel self-conscious. It’s a downside to working with spies; they seem to read one’s mind sometimes and see all too much, and this one is clearly very sharp. 

* *

“Fuck, what was that?”   
  
“Not my doing. No, don’t pull the bloody gun, idiot! If they don’t know it’s us by now, they definitely will if we run around waving guns.”   
  
“You’d rather--”   
  
“Shut up and move! You said you’d do what I say!”   
  
“I can’t see a fucking thing.”   
  
“Shut. UP!”   
  
They keep going in the semi-dark maze of shockproof glass, metal and marble. Thankfully, most workers have already fled from their offices and it’s less chaotic than in the upper floors.   
  
Rounding the last corner before the last flight of stairs towards the basement level maintenance exit, Q and Blake stop to listen. That’s when the flashlights flashing behind them reach the opposite walls and frantic yelling in Arabic carries from the corridor they have just passed.    
  
And the exit door doesn’t budge. Blake kicks at it and pulls the handle with all his might, the electronic control panel next to it gone black and dead.    
  
“Shit, stop it. They’ve killed it from Maintenance and it overrides my manual unlock-commands. It’s no help. We need to move!”   
  
“Too late!” Blake barks, grabs his gun and shoots one of the guards barging at them in black tactical gear and a gun drawn.    
  
This is how I die, then, Q thinks, and the last thought that crosses his mind before his world goes black is-- 

_ Don’t let me down, Eve _ .

  
  
* *   
  
_ “Eve? Is that you? _ ” M sounds groggy and half-wit, but it  _ is _ three in the morning, Moneypenny reminds herself as she laughs, “Yeah, it’s me. Sorry about the time, but this is quite urgent.”   
  
“ _ World war three? _ ”   
  
“Let’s hope not. I think Q just contacted me. I mean, Shaw.”   
  
“ _ WHAT? _ ”   
  
“And I just spoke with Leiter a moment ago. He left Madeleine with a bug and a tracker. Bond doesn’t know. She’s in the States. I’m flying over tomorrow and will meet with him at Langley.”   
  
“ _ Hold on, go back, slowly. I’m still asleep. What did you say about Q? _ ”   
  
“He sent me an SMS. Coordinates, on the Southern Pacific. And a numerical code for a workstation at the GCHQ. One that’s for storing data long term, if I understood correctly.”   
  
_ “I see.” _ There’s a long pause, and Moneypenny checks her phone to make sure the call hasn’t disconnected. “ _ Can you… come over to my place? _ ”   
  
She smiles at the hesitation and quips, “I thought you’d never ask!”

Mallory just groans.   
  
She’s there in twenty minutes. She’s been privy to his address, of course, but never even glimpsed at the property up close. It’s a gorgeous old house, surrounded by a heavy wrought iron fence, largely taken over by the high-climbing, evergreen ivy. A dark, even-grained gravel path, lined with the same burnished red bricks the house is made of, leads from the gates to the front door, dividing a beautiful but sparse garden.    
  
Inside it’s luxuriously decorated and pristinely kept, almost to the point of being intimidating. She feels out of place in her comfortable shoes and hastily pulled-on sweater.  _ Old money _ , she thinks, and somehow there's a discrepancy with what she knows about Gareth Mallory as a person. She knows his wage as the head of MI6 isn’t  _ that  _ high, and while he might still afford it, she doubts he would have chosen to buy this place for himself. He’s clearly a traditionalist, but not one to flaunt his social standing. It’s too big. Too grandiose.    
  
It must be the family home he’d shared with his wife and son, perhaps even her family property.   
  
Gareth is fully dressed and freshly shaven as he greets her -- and when did she start to think of him by the first name? -- having already turned on his work laptop and two separate screens, one running a satellite map program, the other calling up schematics of the GCHQ.    
  
There’s also a half-empty whiskey bottle on the corner of the coffee table, and another empty one just visible behind the sink on the kitchen counter. If Moneypenny knows anything about her boss, it’s that he’s not the type to leave things lying around.    
  
She pulls out a chair next to him and sits down without invitation, rests her hand on his forearm lightly and ventures, “Are you alright?”   
  
By the direction of her gaze, he knows what she means and doesn’t answer, pulling his arm away, face hardening.   
  
“Show me the coordinates, let's take a look.”   
  
She sighs and hands him a slip of paper, not daring to push the issue. He types the numbers into the program. At first there’s nothing. He zooms in the view until it’s at maximum, moves the cursor around a little. And there, slightly north of the original coordinates, just barely noticeable, is a tiny ripple in the image. A ripple that moves.   
  
“See this”, he breathes excitedly, “It has to be a ship - a big one - but it’s not showing up on the satellite images. And I would bet not on radar either. Some kind of mirror technology or a signal scrambler.”   
  
“Safin’s?”   
  
“Possibly.”   
  
“That means Q---”   
  
“Shaw. Is on our side. Whatever’s on that workstation at GCHQ, he’s giving us something valuable. I’ll make sure first thing in the morning that a suitable agent is assigned to it, and make sure it’s kept top secret. But not now, we don’t want to make a fuss.”   
  
“We have to let Double-O-Seven know.”   
  
“She’ll check in with me once they’re in location. I’ll tell them.”   
  
“Can we track the route,” she asks, “to see where it’s headed? Or where it is coming from. We might need to alert the Americans.”   
  
“You’re right. I’ll record it and keep you updated. If it comes to that, you’ll be able to coordinate that with Leiter. I understand he has a lot of sway these days.”

“Alright. My plane leaves in four hours. Everything’s ready, but I’d like to have a couple of hours’ sleep if you don’t mind. Good night, M.”   
  
She gets up and makes to leave, but Mallory clears his throat, following her. “I have a guest room, if you’d like.” He points at the door farthest down the hallway. “It would give you an extra half hour at least. I could have the driver pick up your bags on the way.”   
  
Moneypenny hesitates for a second before nodding, and she reads the exact moment on Mallory’s face when it dawns to him what kind of assumptions that kind of arrangement would arouse, should anyone find out.    
  
But he can’t very well back down from the offer anymore, and quite frankly, Eve doesn’t give a shit. It’s been a really long two days, and she’s ready to collapse.    
  



	6. Chapter 6

Q comes to his senses with a violent coughing fit as air rushes back into his lungs.    
  
There’s a crushing weight on top of him, and he’s momentarily blinded by a flashlight shining directly into his eyes.    
  
Three calming (but laborious) breaths later, he can make out a familiar silhouette behind the light, dressed in dark combat gear, one hand pointing the light towards him, and in another there’s a gun trained firmly on Blake.    
  
“Double-O-Seven. How nice of you to drop by.”   
  
He’s not sure if he’s relieved beyond the immediate moment, though, because as far as timings go, and as perfect as this one was, it’s absolutely too soon to be Moneypenny’s response to his text.   
  
The weight on top of him moves, and although he gets an elbow into the ribs, it’s the other hand groping at his crotch that gets his full attention.    
  
“Is that a gun, or are you just happy to see me?”   
  
And just like that, he’s completely  _ fucked _ , again, and thinking  _ please just kill me _ .   
  
“Gun,  _ obviously; _ now get the hell off me before I suffocate.” He’s angry at himself even more than he’s terrified.   
  
“Excellent, lost mine,” Bond grinds out, pulls out Q’s pistol as he shoves himself upright, stumbles over three dead bodies and disappears behind the corner, gun pointed towards the hallway.   
  
There are a couple of silenced thuds, and he returns a moment later, sprays of blood on his face.   
  
Q gets up from the ground slowly, dusting the debris off of himself, and stares at the destruction around them: the exit door is partially torn off its hinges, part of the roof has caved in, and there’s a sizable hole on the ground where the door used to be. The eye roll is purely a reflex.    
  
“Who the hell are you?” Blake has lost his gun too, but apparently not his stupid bravado. He steps towards 007, threat in his stance. Q recognises the need to act quickly before there’s one more body on the floor. He steps between them and stares his former agent down. 

“Lower the gun, Double-O-Seven, please, there’s no need.”   
  
She doesn’t budge.   
  
Bond puts his hand on her arm, shaking his head minutely, and she acquiesces.    
  
“Let’s get out of here. Anything else can wait,” he says firmly, and they move out into the tunnels that connect the separate buildings of the huge complex.    
  
“Do you have a vehicle?” Q asks, and the agents exchange a look that Q knows all too well.   
  
“Had,” 007 informs him.   
  
“Spare me the details,” Q retorts and stalks towards a cleaning agency van that’s parked closest to the used-to-be doorway.    
  
It’s a work of less than a minute for Q to get it unlocked and started, but once the engine roars to life, 007 points to the back of the van and commands, “You three. In there. I’ll drive.” Bond throws her a look, but doesn’t argue. She has a point; she’s the least likely to raise suspicion behind the wheel.   
  
They jump in the back and Bond knocks off the window in the partition, peering through it at 007, who has donned a SuperClean Ltd. cap left on the passenger seat.   
  
“Where are we going?” Blake asks, now more subdued in tone, having taken stock of his situation.    
  
“Somewhere to lay low. Any suggestions?,” she asks in turn, and explains: “Our plans took a little unannounced turn. We need to regroup. What the hell is going on here?”   
  
“We’ve got company”, Q says, looking out of the rear window and spotting the security company car that takes off after them. “Shit, this didn’t work out, we need to shake them off.”   
  
“In this clunker?” Bond grumbles, checking the ammo on the gun he snatched from Q.   
  
“Move!” Blake shoves Bond aside from the partition window and points through it. “See that pillar? Turn left right after it, crash through the gate if it’s closed. Leads to the junkyard. Gates are open from there and there’re no guards on the regular.    
  
007 does as he suggests, driving through the closed gates and losing both mirrors but otherwise their vehicle suffers surprisingly little damage. They speed through piles of scrap metal, and Bond shoots through the rear window, aiming at a few of the more precariously standing structures to scatter debris on their pursuers’ path. From there, it’s a race through a couple of blocks and a long tunnel, until they make it to the highway. 007 cuts across three lanes to the left and then there’s a convenient break in the dividing fence. She yanks the wheel hard, not slowing down much, and barely makes the U-turn without crashing into oncoming traffic. Their pursuers miss the chance, disappearing amidst the flow of traffic in the other direction.    
  
“Wow, good driving!” Blake breathes out, relieved. “Except now we’re going the wrong way.”   
  
“What do you have in mind?” Q asks, then realises, “The hangar?”   
  
“The hangar.”   
  
“You think it’s safe? They’ll have you on the shoot on sight -list too, by now.”   
  
“We’ll go in when it’s dark. Leave this car and find another one soon as possible, and wait in it until it gets dark. Make plans. You can get us in, I don’t think it’s wise to try and use my ID.”   
  
“Nomi,” Q says, making his way on wobbly legs to the window as the van keeps up its somewhat bumpy ride, “Take us around, please, I think we have a plan.”   
  
“Bond?” She asks for her partner's opinion.   
  
“I agree. We need a change of vehicle. Then, whatever gets us back on British soil.”   
  
“We’re not going back to London,” Q looks at Bond, determination hardening his features. “We don’t have the time for that. If you didn’t come here to shoot me dead, I might as well point you to a target, since the mayhem you caused just blew my chances of doing it quietly.”   
  
“Safin?”   
  
“Yes. He’s onto your operation so he won’t waste time, whatever he’s planning. I caught his location last night and sent it to Moneypenny. He’s elusive, but there are ways we can reach him. Stop him. There’s only one complication… I tripped on my own security systems just this morning. He likely suspects I’ve betrayed him. I don’t know if I can get into any of the systems anymore. We’ll need to get physically inside. By we, I mean you.”   
  
“Of course. Where are we going then?”   
  
“In the middle of nowhere. It’s called Point Nemo.”   
  
“Point Nemo?” 007 asks, “The most remote spot on Earth?”   
  
“It’s a ship,” Q clarifies, as they turn away from the highway in the next intersection, heading into a parking garage. “Although you could call it that. It’s the largest warship ever built. A fortress around a fountain of information. Crew of only about two thousand, it’s largely automated. Carries up to 40 fighters or small aircrafts, two helicopters and the runway’s suitable for landing even a passenger plane.” 

They leave the car in an empty space, keys in the ignition, and Q makes short work of the lock and alarm system of the equally banged-up minivan next to it, explaining all the while:    
  
“The artillery is formidable, lots of new technology. It has a docking bay for a couple of specific types of submarine. A launching site for hypersonic missiles; carrying two of them, I believe. It’s never in harbour, and whenever it’s anchored, it’s always far away enough from the shore that it can’t be easily reached. Its defenses are its most groundbreaking feature, however: it’s virtually undetectable. Safin’s little kingdom without land. It could pass for an island.”   
  
“Nice, did you design it?” Bond asks, only half joking.   
  
“Only the defence systems,” Q replies, entirely serious. “I wouldn’t...”   
  
“The flight deck is mostly mine,” Blake says. “And the fighters and helicopters, ordered and customised by yours truly.”   
  
“Still, it’s just a ship,” 007 observes, smoothly paying for the parking ticket as she drives out of the gates and accelerates back onto the highway. “Where to?” Blake gives her the directions.   
  
“I mean, couldn’t we tip off the Americans, have them send a fleet?”   
  
“It’s not  _ just a ship! _ ” Q protests, “It’s not just a war machine. Imagine all the satellite and computer technology SPECTRE had in their desert base, all that capacity and sheer processing power in those servers -- and then, picture a simple remote exploit, a tiny piece of code really, that in the hands of a decent hacker, or specific kind of AI, gives that army of computers untraceable access anywhere in cyberspace. Anywhere at all, except the servers of MI6. It’s almost organic; changing itself constantly, learning from every system it breaks into. That’s what all the artillery is  _ for _ . Guns protecting the computers, computers protecting their homebase while conquering the world, bit by bit.”   
  
Q exhales harshly, out of breath. “It’s not just a ship, it’s a control station of almost any computer in the world. That’s what I did.”   
  
Bond lets it sink in for a while, Q watches the agent realise the scope of their mission. He’s never seen Bond go so unnaturally still.   
  
“Why?” He asks finally.   
  
“Because I could,” Q answers, closing his eyes for a calming moment. “Because it had to be done, and it had to be me.”   
  
“You gave him that program so you could spy on him using it?”   
  
“I mirrored everything onto my own systems for eight months.”   
  
“How?” Bond asks, curious.    
  
Q snaps his fingers. “Magic.”   
  
“I’m not entirely ignorant on computer sciences, you know.”

“I know. That’s why I’m not telling you.”

“Ouch.” Bond pouts, mock-hurt.    
  
007’s voice sounds choked at her own observation as she speaks, “So what you’re saying is… he could play the world like a chessboard? Control information. Rig elections, expose military strategies, sell state secrets… Plant evidence, create conspiracies, topple governments. Hell, he could set nuclear powers on each other. He could destroy… everything.”   
  
“He won't,” Q says, blasé. “I don’t know him well, but he’s not like that; he fancies himself as a kind of modern-day renaissance man… Da Vinci reborn. An inventor of great things, an artist even. He wants to leave the world a better place than he found it.”   
  
“And you believe that bullshit?” Bond asks incredulously.   
  
“It’s not a matter of believing it. He’s invested a lot on fusion and solar energy. That’s where a lot of his money comes from. He could use nuclear missiles on the ship if he wanted that kind of power, but he’s developed hypersonic technology instead. I believe his missiles are more powerful and have a far longer range than those new ones Americans are testing right now. Bet he’s planning to push that technology out to replace the dirty bombs. For that, he needs to create the market first. The whole idea is that those kinds of weapons are more  _ usable  _ because they’re  _ considered safe _ . He’s not out to destroy the Earth. Merely the social order he sees as defunct.”   
  
“I can’t believe you’re defending terrorists.” Bond glares at Q.    
  
“An anarchist rather than a terrorist.” Bond’s attitude irks Q. “There’s a difference. And I’m not defending him! I’m trying to make you see what you’re going up against. He’s smart and terrifyingly level-headed for a madman. He’s resourceful, stirring unrest wherever he finds useful. Violent riots in the US, quietly contained nuclear accidents in China and poisonings in Russia, more posturing again from North Korea? The Middle East has been suspiciously quiet while Mossad agents keep turning up dead and practically every EU-country has growing factions advocating their own version of Brexit, making the whole union unstable? He pokes at those powder kegs to make them explode, the balance shifts, possibly creating a chain reaction and something he considers ‘evil’ gets swept off the map. Small things influence great outcomes especially when a lot of money is involved. He may be a vengeful bastard hell bent on destroying Blofeld and all his work, but that’s not all he is. Sound familiar? It’s a fine line between good intentions and bad outcomes if you ask me.”

“That’s true,” Blake interjects, “That’s what blinded me to his madness. A lot of what he did was great. And, well, he had the resources none of us would have found elsewhere. He’s got a lot of decent folk working for him.”   
  
He extends a hand out for Bond to shake. “My name’s Michael Blake, by the way. Mike for short.” Q watches, curious, as Bond squeezes it too tight, muttering only a brief “Bond,” in response.    
  
“You work together?” he asks Q, pointedly ignoring Blake.   
  
“Old acquaintances,” Q informs him, because why not. “He’s the one who recruited me.”   
  
They’re quiet for a while then, Blake occasionally giving directions until they arrive in the outskirts of the city. Desert winds are picking up and blowing sand across the windshield. It’s getting hot in the back of the black minivan, and it’s far from comfortable despite the half-decent air conditioning, although in this car they all have seats at least. They spot an open carport next to a storage facility on the edge of an industrial park, and settle there to wait. It shields them from the worst of the heat, but it’s still going to be a hellish day.   
  
Q has a burning question on his mind that he hasn’t dared to ask yet. He’s seen the footage of Bond with the CIA agent. Knows that the CIA is after him and that they are probably not the only ones. He guesses Leiter must have something to do with Bond being here. 

But considering he’s with 007-- Nomi… is it possible? Could he have returned to MI6 after all?

To think that Q himself had left it all behind, but only after he’d been absolutely certain he would never see  _ his  _ 007 there again. 

“Are you back at Six?” He blurts out into the silence, because his brain-to-mouth filter has apparently suffered damage from all the beating he’s already taken today.   
  
“No,” Bond simply answers and looks away. Q opens his mouth to inquire further, but thinks better of it. 

It feels strangely like a loss again.    
  
* *   
  
“Can I get my gun back?”    
  
Bond shakes his head at Q’s question. “I like it.”   
  
“Still can’t hold onto yours.”   
  
It’s a statement he can’t deny, so he doesn’t try. He studies Q, the past years now more evident on his face in the bright daylight. He’s changed a lot. He’s still the same, of course, but somehow vaguely unfamiliar. It’s not the shorter hair, different glasses or the bloodied scrapes and sticky trails of sweat running down dust-covered skin that make him look older and weary. It’s in the almost dull look of his dark green gaze, whenever it settles on Bond. 

It’s very unexpected and makes him want to reach out, apologise. 

He can’t, because there are too many people here for such conversations. 

Blake, for one. They’ll get him out. He could be an important asset, and he’s a good pilot, and he can get them to where they need to go, but right now Bond resents Leiter for not effectively snatching him out of the picture earlier. They could do without him, but they’re stuck with him, regardless.

Q demanded it. 

It’s only natural that he’d made friends within his new circle, Bond reasons. Friends that he’s apparently ready to betray, except for this one. 

This one seems to have been close enough to trust; to be involved in Q’s plans, had their paths not literally collided. It makes him feel a twinge of… something.

Bond shuts down that train of thought fast. He’s not going to get distracted over such idiocy. They have a job to do.   
  
Eventually the heat of day begins to give way to the cool evening breeze and the shadows lengthen over the landscape. They are all hungry enough to fight over a stale bag of peanuts that 007 finds in the glove compartment. They won’t risk detection by going shopping.There will be some provisions on the plane, if Blake is to be trusted. It’s going to be a near 19-hour flight for some of them. That’s insane, even for Bond’s standards.   
  
Q has been glued to his laptop for more than two hours by now, carefully breaking into the security systems, by-passing identification protocols and disconnecting alarms one by one. 

007 has spoken with M, updating him twice during the day, and has received the fresh coordinates for their flight. They prepare a flight plan and a tentative escape plan, but in Bond’s opinion, it’s a wasted effort. Nothing ever goes according to plan anyway. 

When the darkness has fully fallen, they leave the car where it is and jog for a mile, circling behind warehouses and backyards of large industrial buildings until they arrive at the electrified fence surrounding the private airfield. 007 produces a small gadget that cuts the thick wires with a tiny, precise laser, and they step quietly through. There are a few lights on around the perimeter and in the hangar building itself, and the runway lights are on standby, but otherwise it looks quiet and deserted.

Q pulls out his laptop again, and quickly types a command. On the other side of the hangar, a control panel on the wall spits out sparks and smoke, but no one comes to investigate.    
  
They wait for half a minute, and then, as it still looks clear, Q nods at them to move forward. Blake casually opens the back door into the hangar, and they all slip in under the cover of darkness.    
  
Blake immediately rushes into the control room, and Bond suppresses an impulse to follow him. Q scans about for useful tech and some weapons to take with them, and Bond hovers nearby. He takes in the three planes currently sitting there in the open hangar, quietly in wait. Two are smaller civilian type aircrafts, twin-engined monoplanes that on the first glance look harmless. Bond knows better than to be fooled. The third one is a surprise: it’s a hulk of a transport jet, taking up most of the building’s space. And that’s the one both Blake and Q start loading their stuff into.    
  
“Quit gawking and get a move on,” Blake barks at the agents caught admiring the thing. “We don’t have the time, someone’ll come in here any second!”   
  
They board the plane, Blake automatically assuming the pilot seat for himself, and Bond accompanies him into the cockpit. He doesn’t trust that man as far as he can throw him. Blake ignores him completely and focuses on the pre-flight routine. 

Only Q is still standing there at the foot of the stairs, momentarily frozen in place. 

And Bond remembers. 

_ Q is afraid of flying. _

_ Of course he is _ .

He hadn’t given it any thought since Shanghai. Q  _ had _ flown to meet him in Austria, afterall.

“Come on, Q, let’s go,” he calls out from the doorway, softer than a command, more reassuring. 

He startles out of it and climbs aboard, two steps at a time. “Don’t call me that,” he snaps as he slips inside past Bond’s shoulder and hits the switch that pulls the stairs in, closing the door. 

“What should I call you, then?”, Bond asks, curious. 

“Whatever else, I don’t care.” He goes to peek into the cockpit, and apparently satisfied with what Blake signals him, returns to sit on one of the seats that line the walls of the first half of the plane. There is a door in the partition dividing the passenger area from the large hold that takes up most of the interior space of the aircraft. It looks nothing like a standard airbus.

“I’m not going to call you Benjamin Shaw, or bloody  _ Ben _ , that’s not your name and it never was.”

“Bloody Ben sounds good, I think I’ll go with that.”

There might have been a ghost of a smile playing around Q’s lips, and Bond counts it as a victory, as the hangar doors start sliding open, and the heavy aircraft nudges forward. He takes a seat across from Q’s and prepares for take-off. 


	7. Chapter 7

Moneypenny sits in a rental car in San Diego, California, waiting and trying very much not to fall asleep. The warm, comfortable afternoon sun is not helping. She’s had enough of the british weather, she thinks, and it’s just her luck that when she has the rare chance to soak up sunlight, she’s too busy and too tired to enjoy it properly.

Leiter had been busy, too, but they’d had a brief chat and he had arranged her flight to the west coast. The tracker he’d left on Madeleine indicated that she still carried it and had spent the past two days there. The bug still transmitted sound, too, but apparently Swann had buried the jewelry deep in her luggage or something, because little to none of it was comprehensible, even run through an editing software.

What was in San Diego, then? There were the obvious connections, namely an Intelscape US branch office in Palm Springs, and AtomiX Fusion Tech headquarters based in Anaheim, both with well-established ties to Blake and his associates.They were close enough, but nothing indicated she had visited either of those. The tracker placed her in the Radisson Hotel where it has stayed for the past 40 hours or so.

She had started to suspect Miss Swann had found the device and left it behind to mislead any followers. A careful inquiry at the reception confirmed she really did have a reservation, but also that she isn’t currently in the premises.

So Moneypenny waits. And watches. And gets bored. She’s on her third cup of take-out coffee when she spots a black Audi entering the parking lot, Madeleine Swann stepping out of it, accompanied by a tall, black man dressed in all black designer streetwear. He has a large tattoo on his right forearm, half peeking out from under a rolled-up sleeve. He lifts his sunglasses up onto his forehead as they pass by on the other side of the road, and Moneypenny internally cheers. She takes out her phone, zooms in on his face and manages to get a 10-second clip; not much but it would do just fine.

A couple of minutes later, she reads a message from Felix, identifying the man as Ciaran “Triggerman” Todd; the very same gunman who had targeted Leiter, and by association, Bond, at their meeting in Jamaica.

They spend less than half an hour inside the hotel, and Moneypenny uses that time to alert M.

He answers her call again sounding groggy, and she makes the quick calculation to London time. It’s one in the morning.

“ _Your timings leave a lot to be desired these days, Moneypenny…_ ”  
  
“I’m sorry, but you have to hear this. Swann is in contact with the same assassin that coordinated the hit on Bond and Leiter.” Her urgent tone seems to wake him up.

“ _Shit… where are you now? Still on watch?_ ”

“Looks like they are packing up, leaving the hotel now. What do you want me to do?”

“ _What’s the status in Leiter’s camp?_ ”

“He’s coordinating a follow-up operation to Dubai as we speak. They’re already moving in on Intelscape here. AtomiX is under surveillance, but they don’t have the clearance to operate. It’s considered nuclear high risk.”

“ _Alright. Do we have any specifics on Swann’s agenda yet?_ ”

“No, but she must have alerted Safin. She’s been trying to play both sides regarding Bond. I think she’s heading out of the States, trying to stay out of the way, she seemed somewhat nervous. I don’t think she’s surveillance aware, though.”

“ _Returning to Europe, then, most likely. I want you to tail her until we know for sure where she’s headed. Keep me updated. I’m going to inform Double-O-Seven._ ”

“Bond is going to have a fit.”

“ _Well, better now than when Safin throws it at him. Poor sod, I can almost sympathise._ ”

“Yeah. Go back to sleep. It’s going to be only a few hours until the showdown.”  
  
“ _I’m afraid my nerves won’t let me._ ”  
  
“It’s going to be alright.”  
  
“ _Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure it will._ ”  
  
“You're handling it, Boss. Now go to sleep and kick their asses tomorrow.”  
  
“ _Thanks, Eve._ ”  
  
“Yeah, yeah. You can thank me when I’m back in London. Good night.”  
  
She ends the call slightly unsettled by the way Mallory is letting the cracks in his armor show. She trusts the core of steel inside of him to withstand the pressures of the job, but this recent vulnerability she’s been privy to seems to be of a more personal origin. Maybe that’s something to investigate later and offer to help in any way she can.

Madeleine and Todd return to their car, and Moneypenny waits for another moment before starting after them. Her hunch seems to be right as they keep following the airport signs. She follows them, letting a few more cars slide in between.

Then, out of nowhere, a similar black car appears in her rearview mirror, overtakes her and a man on the passenger side starts shooting. Moneypenny swerves hard to the right, and the bullets rain harmlessly on the trunk. The next round empties her tyres and it’s inevitably over. The Audi speeds away and she skids to a halt before the police start swarming in. Fucking hell, dealing with American cops is the last thing she needs.

She’s pissed off enough to barely be thankful for still breathing. She decides to call Tanner instead of M, because they might as well all suffer their share.

* *  
  
It’s been almost ten hours. Q’s anxiety over the take-off aside, he’s surprised how smoothly it has gone. Nobody tried to shoot them down, which is fairly unexpected. He hopes it’s because their commandeering of the plane hadn’t yet raised an alarm rather than Safin being aware of his betrayal and purposefully waiting for them. Bond’s invasion into the Intelscape buildings was an unplanned complication, and although he admits that he would have been hundred percent dead right now without the agents’ timely assistance, the associated mayhem has left them much more exposed to the enemy than he would like.

There’s still another small eternity to go in this tin can, and it’s starting to wear on him, slowly chipping away his resilience.

He should be feeling proud. 007 and Bond had both absolutely beamed at his reveal of their precious cargo. Nomi had hugged and congratulated him, having known of the project that had been cancelled. She was a former RAF pilot after all, Q reminded himself. She would have the best understanding and training out of them to pilot it. He remembers her being very interested when he’d introduced the model back at Six. Bond is really the ideal partner for her on the mission with his Navy background. His Dream Team, if he could have chosen. Only it is going to be a match very likely to turn into a nightmare. Just two agents against two thousand.  
  
Nomi’s phone chirps on the opposite side of the aisle and she goes very still after greeting M. It’s a brief conversation, and when they’re finished, she goes to the cockpit to ask for Bond.  
  
“M has some news that you should hear. Both of you, actually.”  
  
“Bad?” Trust Bond to be the pessimist.

“You’re not going to like it.”  
  
“The Intelligence and Security Committee are shutting this operation down?”  
  
“Actually, not a bad guess. But no -- they are not informed. M’s decided to keep it under wraps.”

“Then what?”

“It’s about Miss Swann. Your friend, Leiter, planted a tracker with her.”

Bond’s eyes widen comically. “Shit, I should have guessed. The earrings?”

“I don’t know the specifics. But the thing is… how do I even say this. She’s compromised. I’m so sorry,” 007 is at a loss of words, but Bond seems strangely unaffected.

“She betrayed me, naturally. Didn’t come as a surprise.” The words are bitter even though his expression hardly changes, only the ice in his eyes grows colder. “For Safin, or is it somehow even more twisted?”

“The CIA knew about her past, nothing very specific but enough to warrant suspicion. Leiter’s insight, probably. They tracked her to California earlier this week. M has sent Moneypenny to the States. She’s been to Langley and followed her trail. She found out Swann has been in contact with your attacker from Jamaica. Goes without saying that Safin’s been warned. And now she is possibly trying to return to Europe. They’ve put an APB out on her.”

Bond closes his eyes for a moment and breathes deeply. Q can’t look away. He doesn’t say anything, because anything that would come out of his mouth would not be benevolent. He hates himself for feeling vindicated; absolutely despises the green-eyed monster that has made him this callous.

“I’ll take the watch, you rest for a while,” Nomi says to Bond, and goes with Blake into the cockpit. The former agent slides down to her vacated seat across from Q.

They sit in silence for quite some time until Bond speaks up, “I wanted to apologise. For everything. For the way I… left.”

“You wanted to do what was right by her. I get it.”

“No, you really don’t,” Bond says, enough weight in his words that it makes Q really listen.  
  
“I knew. Why you always... Why you flew to Austria. I’m not stupid.”  
  
Years ago, Q would have been embarrassed at being called out like that. It’s long gone by now, and the only thing he feels is a distant ache.  
  
“I helped you because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t expect anything. No harm done.”  
  
“That’s not true, is it?” Bond asks, and Q isn’t quite sure who or what he’s referring to.

“She probably wrecked the car, too, after she stole it. The DB5.”  
  
“Now you care about wrecked cars?”  
  
“Cared about that one,” Bond replies, genuine regret in his hushed tone.

“Well, I’m not your therapist, obviously. But we don’t get to choose who we fall for. Just have to move on when you know it’s doomed; when they’re not worth it.”

It’s not a purposefully mean thing to say, but just as it's left his mouth, Q realises how it could be interpreted. Bond looks like he wants to say more, but Q excuses himself to make some final adjustments on their communications equipment before they need to establish a secure link to M and between each other. It’s a conversation he doesn’t want to have, and least of all now. He’s the most nervous he’s ever been and digging into vulnerable emotions he’s worked hard to bury is not helping.  
  
He’s deep into the process of re-calibrating their earpieces to bypass their target’s countermeasures, when Bond appears at his shoulder, peering down at his work.  
  
“Did you know about Madeleine?” He asks.  
  
“No. Why would I want to look her up? And Safin deals with thousands of people.”

“I just thought…”

“Although, now that you mention it: Safin did spend a lot of time in Austria. He had some long-standing contacts at the Institute of Technology. Maybe there’s a connection.”  
  
“Something about it bothers me. She told Felix and me that Safin had wanted revenge on her father. I assumed she thought she was on his hit list too. What would she ever gain from associating with him?”

“I don’t know, immunity? Safin won’t touch her in exchange for a little help here and there? She knows SPECTRE well.”

“It’s plausible, maybe we’ll find out.”  
  
“Yeah. Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to concentrate. We don't have all day.”

“Q. I meant it. When we go back to London--”

“If we go back to London. You do realise the odds?”  
  
“When we go back, I would like to--”  
  
“I really, really need to finish this now, and you need to be going over the schematics with Double-O-Seven. M’s going to be on the comms soon. Get ready.”  
  
Bond sighs theatrically but finally leaves Q to his work. He tries in vain to keep his hands from shaking. It’s the longest three hours of his life as he watches the red dot marking their destination grow closer on the satellite image on his screen.


	8. Chapter 8

It’s a slightly claustrophobic feeling to sit in the second seat in the cockpit of Q’s new creation. The body of the small aircraft looks aerodynamic and stealth-efficient, long wings incredibly bent against its sides to accommodate both the needs of long-distance transport and maneuverability under water. 007 is handling most of the piloting, giving Bond the opportunity to familiarize himself with the submarine functions. Who knew it was even possible to build such things?

He’d felt Q’s pride in his very bones. Like it had been built for him all along. Like in the old days, when he’d ventured down to Q Branch and….

( _“It’s codename in our systems was ‘Cormorant’. You know, for the great diver bird? See, it’s built for stealthy infiltration either in the air or underwater.”_

_“Cormorant? A bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I’m shortening it to Shag. Let’s see if it's a great or a common one.”_

_“What?”_

_“You know, for the bird. I have a namesake who’s an ornithologist.”_ )

Bond is not a fighter pilot by any stretch. His appreciation of Nomi as a Double-O agent grows by the minute as he watches her handle it, despite her denying of ever having flown something like this before. He definitely prefers sitting here at the mercy of her skills and decisions rather than Blake’s. Leaving Q alone on that plane with him goes against every one of his instincts, but they have no choice. 

If things go according to plan, they should be able to meet at Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam in Hawaii after Safin has been taken down and the immediate threat neutralised. The option of trying to bring him in isn’t even discussed. They are to drop Bond and 007 off about 200 miles from their target to avoid detection: although the freighter is flying practically blind to stay off the radar, it has no stealth capabilities to speak of. The small fighter on the other hand… is made for this exact purpose. However, it uses the same technologies as their target, Point Nemo, and therein lies a vulnerability Q has spent hours working past. Bond finds it surprisingly easy to trust his life on the hope that he has succeeded.

His earpiece crackles slightly as it comes to life with M’s sharp voice.   
  
“ _Bond._ _All set?_ ”

“All set.”  
  
The drop goes smoothly, and Q’s grim face as he salutes them off solidifies his resolve. They are coming back. Safin will not. 

007’s voice comes in through his musings soon enough. “Retracting wings. Switch on the turbines on three.”  
  
The view of the approaching surface is swallowed by the white rush of water overhead.   
  
“One. Two. Three.”   
  
He punches in the controls, and there’s only a small jolt to signal the change of their power source from a combustion engine to the small energy-efficient fusion reactor, essentially turning their vessel from a plane into a submarine. 

It occurs to him that Q could make millions off of this technology. 

And the government had defunded the project under MI6. 

It all goes without a hitch up until the point when they approach their target, slowly inching towards the stern on the starboard side under the gigantic bulk of the ship. 

“Shaw? Our ID isn’t working. The gate doesn’t open. Can you do something about it?” 007 asks over the comms. 

“ _Stay under. Give me a minute. I’m on it, but I need a distraction first. I’m going to try unlocking all the doors on this deck, make it pass for a glitch with any luck, hold on._ ”

In a moment, part of the hull slides up and the docking bay containing three vessels similar to their own opens up before them. It’s impressive. It’s a three decks high open space surrounded on three sides by landing docks, stairs leading up to each level, all walkways lined by control stations, surveillance equipment and various safety- and nautical gear. One half of the first deck is filled with gun racks. Sea water flows freely into the enclosed space, until the gate slides closed again and the water stills. There are two large muscle boats hauled up on the dock, and Bond notes it’s hinged: the boats can be released individually in an instant by dropping them into the water. Next to them, there is a lift for bringing the “cormorants” up onto the hangar deck.  
  
He scans the premises for anything useful as an alternative escape mode, but it’s no use. Given their current location nearly two thousand miles from the closest shore, they will be sitting ducks in anything other than what they arrived in, or the odd chance of making an escape in one of the better equipped aircrafts on the flight deck. 

“ _Hostiles incoming, armoury deck. Second floor above you._ ” Q’s voice in his ear is urgent, cracking with static.

“How many,” Bond asks quietly, drawing his handgun. 

“ _Maybe two, not sure, my connection’s unstable. Double-O-Seven, to your right!_ ” 

She turns around and takes aim just as the door to the corridor above them opens and three men rush out onto the walkway. They drop dead before Bond can blink. Oh yes, she’s _good_. He gives her a little appreciative nod, making her smile tightly.

She gestures to proceed into that same hallway, and he follows close behind. She gives a quick cursory glance at the shelves and picks up suitable ammo as she goes.   
  
“ _Take a left turn at the end,” Q instructs, “go around the engine room on the starboard side if possible. There are hostiles in there, moving, can’t make out the exact number. Wait!_ ”

By the sounds of water lapping against the broadside and metal groaning, Bond can tell that the ship has changed its course, slowed down. Their entrance strategy has raised alarms. Echoes of running footsteps carry from the parallel corridor on the other side of the engine room. He tries to keep the layout in mind, but the complexity and sheer size of the ship make it impossible to have memorised everything on such a short notice. 

007 moves ahead, again signalling for Bond to follow. They pass several closed doors on both sides of the long corridor, most of them marked by numbers and letters only. Some are marked as ‘laboratory’ and ‘bioanalytics’. “Holy shit, what's this?” she whispers, and moves aside, allowing Bond to take a look at one such door, labeled with a ‘toxic’, ‘biohazard’ and ‘acid’ symbols and a large ‘NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY’ sign above it. 

“Shaw?” she asks, “what’s in the laboratories?”

“ _Lab… what?”_ _  
_ _  
_ “They’re keeping some kind of biological or chemical agents in here. There are warnings.”

_“It’s marked as crew quarters and gym in the schematics. Oh hell. He must have known for a long time that I was looking for something._ ”

“Biological or chemical weapon laboratory? On a _ship?_ That seems unlikely,” Bond says.

“ _Why not? Like I said: it’s not just a ship. At least it’s isolated and unreachable. He’s got an array of suitable warheads onboard even for that kind of a weapon…_ ”   
  
Q’s voice is momentarily distracted, and Bond imagines him running a dozen queries on his laptop while looking at the floor plan where their earpieces show their locations as tiny red dots. He’s startled simultaneously by a clanging door nearby and Q’s sharp order:

“ _Move! Straight ahead, third door on your left. Up two flights._ ” 

It opens without a hitch and they’re in a narrow see-through staircase, climbing the steep spiral stairs when suddenly above them a door opens and gunfire rains down on them. He returns fire, but on the corner of his eye, he sees 007 drop her gun and hiss sharply, briefly clutching her arm. The gun clatters down to the bottom of the stairwell. 

The shooter falls forward too, and Bond yanks at his arm, twisting hard enough that the man tumbles down there following 007’s gun. She pushes forward, kicking the door open and pulling her semi-automatic rifle over her shoulder, ready to fire. The room is thankfully vacated.   
  
“Q, do you copy,” Bond pants into the comms, but gets no reply. 

“Shaw, come in!” 007 tries, to no avail. Then she changes channels and tries M. It’s all static, too. 

“Fuck, we’re on our own,” she curses and hisses in pain again. Blood runs down to her fingertips on her right hand, and droplets drip to the floor.

“It’s just a scrape,” she tells him, but coming from a Double-O, it’s not really reassuring as he very well knows. 

“Do we need to bind it?” He asks, thinking about blood loss but also the very visible trail they’ll be leaving unless they can slow the bleeding. 

“No.” She grinds out angrily, pulling off her gloves and stuffing them inside her torn sleeve, folding them into a padding against the wound on her forearm. “That’ll soak it up.”

“Come on, one more flight to go, then we should be on the launch deck.”

They step back into the stairwell, checking up and down to be sure, and quickly ascend to the next exit. 

The earpiece comes back to life then, Q’s voice uncharacteristically shaken as he calls for them.

“ _Bond? Can you hear me?_ ”

“I hear you alright. What happened?”

“ _Lost the connection for a moment. Signal disturbance still messes with it._ ”

“Double-O-Seven is hit. Not badly, mind. Right forearm.”

“It’s nothing,” she cuts in, “let’s hurry up. Shaw, can you identify how many there are? Positions?”

“ _Not clearly. I’ve found Safin though. He’s on the bridge. Deal with the missiles first, I can’t do anything about them remotely._ ”

“Alright. Missiles, Safin, computers. In that order. Shall we go, then?” She draws in a steadying breath, and Bond envies her calm. 

“Q, how’s it going? For you, I mean?” Bond asks, before they head on. He has to know. 

“ _Smoothly, no pursuers_ ,” he confirms quickly. “ _Four hostiles, clearly visible. One at the launch controls, another moving around the assembly bench. He’s working on something… a large object. Likely unarmed, looks like these are just techies. Two guards at the door._ ”

“Copy.”

They back up against the wall next to the door on both sides. At 007’s curt nod, he knocks on the door, and a couple of seconds later she shoots the guard peeking out in the head. Bond wipes the blood spray off his eyes and charges the other one as he rushes to engage them. It devolves into a scramble for the guard’s gun, and the wailing that ensues sounds like the techies have activated every possible alarm in the system. He finally manages to knock out his adversary and fights for breath. He slams the door shut behind them and makes sure it’s bolted.

007 has both techies at gunpoint, ushering them towards the control room.

“Disengage the missile,” she commands them, but neither of them move to comply. “Do it!”

“No time for being polite,” Bond says, and shoots one of them in the leg. “Get in there and lock yourselves in.” He points at the storage chamber where three other missiles are laid out on long shelves on top of each other. The man howls in pain and spits insults at him, but they retreat where ordered.

“Q? Can you hear me?” It’s been quiet for a suspiciously long time, and he gets nothing but static again. “Well, shit.”

“You can unload the missile manually?” 007 points out, “We’ll do that and destroy the control panel.”

“Or leave it in the tube and lock the cell hatch”, Bond says looking up. “I have an idea.”

“We’re not allowed to sink this damn ship, don’t even think about detonating it!”

“I’m not leaving Q’s work lying about for the Americans to pick through.”

“Look, we can just destroy the power plant, it’ll black out the computers, what is there left for them to find?”

“Just destroy it? I love how you make it sound so simple. They’re fusion reactors, not the regular ones, we don’t know the technology! What the hell, even Q doesn’t know, he said so! Do you _want_ to end up with radiation poisoning?” 

“And you think detonating a _fucking hypersonic missile_ inside the tube is a better idea?”

“That’s the thing, it won’t do much damage without the hypersonic speed. Thought you knew that.”

“I know, I know. I mean, how do we detonate it and get out? What if it blows off the whole docking bay? It’s too close. _We’ll_ be too close.”

“I don’t know. Improvise!”

“Ah, you’re impossible! We don’t have the time for this, lead the way, then!”

“Q, come in!” Bond tries one more time, re-choosing the channel, but there’s nothing but static. He tries M, too, but gets nothing.

“Alright, let’s do this.” He looks at Nomi and despite her arguments, finds trust and determination in her eyes as she nods. “I can’t even imagine what’ll happen if we don’t.”

Quickly, Bond moves to the control panel to disconnect the latches that anchor the missile onto the launch pad in the large single-cell vertical launch system; retracts the supporting stand, making the heavy cylinder tip lightly sideways against the wall of the launch tube. He leaves it there, terminating the protocol with unloading incomplete. Then he shoots a few rounds into the console, sending up a shower of sparks.

“It’s loose. Now it can only be detonated manually with an external charge. Let’s take a look at the power plant and see what we could do with the electronics.”

“Ah, forget it. Can you hear that?”

There is an ominous cacophony outside of the heavy steel doors they are locked behind, and it’s not reasonable to try and storm through a mass of Safin’s mercenaries. They need to find another way out, the only obvious choice being through a window. 

“Right. To the bridge, then, and we blow up this beast on the way out if we have to.”

Bond shoots the window, and she throws him a new magazine to replace the one he’s emptied. Trust women to keep stock of even his ammo, he thinks ruefully. Maybe there’s something to the idea that M has taken to, recruiting more ladies as field agents. 

He peers up from the small window, hit by the harsh sea winds, and spots the tower of the ship’s island looming far ahead and above them. He turns to 007 and pulls the small grappling hook device from it’s hold on his belt. 

“One or two decks at a time. Aim for the lighter structures, plating around the windows, railings and such. They’re aluminum or thin steel, the hooks will penetrate and hopefully stick. You shoot it at thick steel or iron plating, it’ll just bounce off.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but refrains from commenting. 

Experimentally, Bond levels his at the curving ledge of the deck spreading outwards above them. The stern of the ship is like a jagged stairway of giant, uneven steps. He hits his target nicely at the junction of two crossing metal bars at the base of the railing. Slowly retracting the thin cable, he lets it lift his weight fully through the window and outside to the mercy of the elements, swinging himself against the cold, wind-whipped hull. It’s murder on his long ago damaged shoulder, but he manages until he gets a handhold of the ledge and pulls himself up. He looks down and makes sure that 007 is following suit. She makes it look easy despite her injury. 

They make it two more decks upwards, and his arms are screaming for mercy, and he feels like he couldn’t even lift his Walther at the moment let alone fire it accurately from the trembling. But it wouldn’t help them any if he could, he realises as he detaches the hook and looks up into a gun barrel. 


	9. Chapter 9

M’s ashen face talking on the large screen is the first thing Bond becomes aware of as he regains consciousness. 

The second one is 007, leaning on him, back against his back and wrists bound together between them as they are uncomfortably sitting on the floor, chained to the wall from their bindings. His hands are slippery from blood, he can’t tell if it’s from the gunshot wound on her arm or if the wire cutting into their skin has chafed their wrists raw. 

The third thing he registers is his name, spoken by M on the screen. 

Safin - it must be him - is stalking back and forth in front of them, talking animatedly towards the screen and when he pauses and looks at him, Bond realises the man’s wearing a white mask. It’s nondescript, slits of beady eyes and narrow lips painted bright red. Otherwise he’s covered in dark clothes. He takes a look around and sees that every other person in the room except for the mercenaries posted as guards are covering their identities with similar masks. 

He doesn’t have a public face, Madeleine had said. Neither do those in his cult who consider themselves important enough to matter.

Did Q have a mask like that stashed somewhere, he wonders - did Blake?

The lingering fog in his concussed brain and drying blood gluing his swelling eye shut are making his perception sketchy, but when M momentarily steps back from the screen and the messy mop of hair and angry scowl belonging to the PM appears on the screen instead, he’s shaken fully awake. 

“ _Britain does not negotiate with terrorists,”_ he announces in a booming voice. _“And that is what you are, Mr. Safin, as clearly shown by evidence M has provided. Your organisations will be exposed and torn down. There will be no grand showdown, you can quit the act. You’re finished!_ ”

Safin only grins and stalks up to Bond and 007. He kicks him in the ribs. Bond isn’t prepared for it and gets the wind knocked out of him. Safin motions for the closest guards to haul them up. He stands on shaky feet, nauseous and feeling 007 tremble in effort to keep from crying out in pain. They are dragged closer, in plain view of the people on the other side of the screen back in London. 

“Mr. Bond,” Safin says, drawing the words out slowly, maliciously. “Finally I get the pleasure of meeting you. One has to wonder, if you hadn’t so readily abandoned _all_ of your former friends, would we not have ended on the same side?”

The bastard is talking about Madeleine, he has to be. Surely not Q..? Bond doesn’t say anything, the defiance in his stare enough to let Safin know he doesn’t think so. 

“We are at a bit of an impasse here,” he continues, “As you can see, your former friends are proving to be very disloyal also when they are put under a little bit of pressure. It seems you are completely abandoned. Don’t we both know how it feels, to be betrayed by those closest to us?”

“What do you want?” he spits out, and despite being generally prepared for anything, Safin’s explanation takes him by surprise. 

“Why, your foster brother, of course. For starters.” The smile has vanished from Safin’s features and he’s entirely serious. “It’s an entirely reasonable solution to us all, don’t you think? He has wronged us all. He will never stop posing a threat to the world as long as he lives. Ernst Stavro Blofeld _has_ to die. Only when he dies will you see how far-reaching his tentacles were. There will be a power vacuum that is going to implode and wreak unimaginable havoc. Only I have the means to stop it, protect who I want to protect, and destroy who I want to destroy in the aftermath. What side will you be on?” 

“That’s the most ludicrous rubbish I’ve ever heard,” Bond says. 

Safin turns back to the screen, addressing the Prime Minister, and the others in the room somewhere in Whitehall, London. He recognises the Defence Secretary, as well as other MP’s in the background, some of them arguing. 

“It’s a simple proposition: give me Blofeld and call your hounds off my tail, I give you your agents back, and the United Kingdom will profit. _Or,_ you can say no, and watch in horror as Blofeld meets his inevitable end, along with countless innocent citizens. I do not want that. It’s in your hands to prevent it.”

“ _How about you give up your game and we put you in a cell right next to Blofeld’s!_ ” The PM’s voice is starting to sound exasperated. He glares at M; _“You’ll pay for this fuckery, Mallory. Wait for it.”_  
  
Bond can feel the slickness in the bindings on their wrists, giving way a little. But it’s still steel wire and well bound. It’s no use trying to wiggle free. 007 is very still, but there’s a tension to her slender frame that suggests she’s up to something. It’s a game of wait and see, then. And Bond intends to give her time.

“Your missile can’t be launched. We’re out of range for any regular artillery to be a threat to a land target. It doesn’t matter what you do to us, Safin, your game is over. Your network is exposed. It’s only a matter of time.”

“As much as I despise meaningless displays of power….” Safin drawls, and walks to the computer center on the other side of the room. He works for a few minutes, and several of the large screens on the wall next to the one with connection to London light up with live satellite footage. Three of them show the new Strategic Command Headquarters in Northwood, outside of London. Or what is left of it. Fire and thick, black smoke cover most of the view and they can’t see what exactly has happened, but simultaneously several phones start ringing on the center screen, sending MP’s scurrying around. The other two screens are showing a seemingly harmless distant image of the circular structure of the GCHQ, otherwise known as ‘The Doughnut’. Zooming in, the third screen displays what appears to be an electric outage spanning widely over London. Still one more screen lights up, mirroring a screen of a computer logged into the GCHQ mainframe, deleting it’s own files, network status of the whole organisation showing as ‘down’. One of the satellite images pans out and forms into a diagram of internet connections, revealing that the whole London area has gone offline. 

Safin waits for the impact of his little tricks to register. Then, as the information floods in from the hit sites, he calls the attention back to himself. 

“Think very carefully, gentlemen. I will hunt down my enemies and those who betrayed me to the last man. But I also make it my mission to pay loyalty in kind. I have access anywhere. I have people everywhere. I can literally order mass destruction to your doorstep in the span of an hour and I don’t necessarily need my own weaponry for it. Yet I am just one man -- with a powerful ideal. Kill me, and you will still have lost, because ideals are forever.”

Felix had once said that it’s getting harder to tell villains from heroes these days, Bond recalls randomly, but he’s just figured out a foolproof indicator: can’t have a villain without the signature speech. 

“I just wanted it to go smoothly, make people see their own mistakes and take steps to correct them. Leave everything a bit tidier in the wake of my revolution. But you have forced my hand. The time has come for the inevitable; sooner than I anticipated, I admit. Nothing man-made lasts indefinitely, and certainly not this precarious status quo between weakened and torn superpowers, cowardly Europe and uncontrollable third world countries. The rich and the poor; oppressors and the oppressed. State borders will no longer draw the lines between people when all that matters is where you can live, and where you cannot. The world is shifting in a new direction, and everyone needs to pick a side. Opportunities are endless in the new world order. What will it be for you, predator or prey? The choice is all yours; I am but a shadow behind the scenes. Imagine your end: would you rather go out with explosive regards from Uncle Sam - the outrage, Prime Minister! You should never leave atomic bombs in the hands of madmen. Or it could be a much less spectacular ending. You know the rumours that the SVR has brought back _Kamera_ : I could introduce you to the proof. Slow and torturous sweep of Death over your country; no cure, no hope, no escape from your island of the lepers. A callback to the fears of the Cold War; that would go nicely down in history, no? The chain of retaliation would be… devastating. But in the end, purifying.”

“I think you just like the sound of your own voice too much,” Bond quips, drawing Safin’s attention back to himself. M and the Defence Secretary have turned their backs towards the screen, and Mallory motions for the PM to join their little counsel. “You’re making a show of playing god, but you’re bluffing,” Bond says, trying to put all the conviction he’s not really feeling into his voice. 

“Bluffing? You should ask what your Chief of Defence Intelligence thinks of that -- Oh, except it looks like you cannot, the news is he has just died in the explosion at Northwood.”

“ _Bond, Double-O-Seven._ ” M appears on the screen again, “ _We have the situation under control._ ” 

Bond takes it as the small measure of reassurance his superior is capable of giving them, knowing fully that a couple of operatives’ lives weigh nothing compared to national security. It’s not personal. He just hopes that AIRCOM or US Navy or whichever they have contacted to finish their mission will be successful. If not, M’s career is as doomed as their lives. 

Safin’s emotionless mask stares back at M through the screen and says, “You could have saved millions.”

He walks slowly back to his computers, and barks an order at the two mercenaries holding Bond and 007 at gunpoint. “Bring them here, let’s show the unbelieving how it’s done.”

They are roughly shoved forward while Safin starts typing and taunts him. “I could torture you for information and you could stall for time… but none of that drama will be needed. I already have all the information you could ever give me. Ours was a brief acquaintance, Mr Bond, and it makes me rather sad to see it end this way. We have so much in common, you and I. I tend to try and surround myself with people I identify with. I hope it generates loyalty. I value loyalty more than anything, Mr Bond. Tell me, why is it that people like us, we always end up betrayed by those we rely on?”

There’s suddenly a sharp pain lancing across the inside of his wrist and forearm, and it takes all his willpower and training not to flinch or cry out. It lasts for a few seconds, and it’s enough for him to realise what’s causing it. He reacts at the same moment that 007 yanks her hands free, dropping her weaponized watch from her bloody fingers as she moves to grab the barrel of the gun of one of the guards. Bond punches the guard on his side hard in the stomach before he has the time to readjust his aim. Bullets shatter the screens on the wall across from them as he lunges for the weapon and forces it from the guard’s grip. 

There are two thousand men on the ship, and they can’t gun them all down. But in Bond’s mind, only one bullet needs to hit home. That’s what he has time for. 

He aims straight at Safin’s white mask and fires. 

Time seems to slow down from there. Safin lies prone on the floor, his mask shattered at the jaw, exposing scarred skin and freely gushing blood. But impossibly, he starts to rise up to his elbows, a gurgling scream of rage escaping him as he throws away the mask. There’s a gaping hole in his cheek. 

“It’s done!” He screams at Bond, “it’s over!” He cries and laughs simultaneously, and a deep sense of cold washes over Bond. He shoots again, and Safin falls, and doesn’t rise again. 

His legs are made of stone, they weigh a ton as he struggles to follow 007 towards the door, fighting off Safin’s men as they pour in from both entrances into the room. He spots her wrist watch on the floor amidst the chaos and picks it up, remembering Q’s special features. He tries the first knob that his finger touches and presses it down hard. A narrow, pale laser beam cuts through the air and conveniently into the thigh of the next man who’s charging at him. He waves it around a bit more, slicing up everyone on his path. It doesn’t kill most of them, but damn, if the thing isn’t handy!

Then he remembers that it’s probably designed by the _new_ Q, and somehow it loses the fascination. He pockets it, as he keeps running, out of the command center, into the open sea air in the direction 007 just disappeared. 

He can’t see her presently, and their earpieces are gone, but it’s obvious in his mind where she’s going. Despite their argument, they had planned for this scenario. She needs to make her way to the launch tubes to seal the hatch from the top deck. Stealing a plane for escape is too risky, they would be shot down in a matter of minutes. They need to get back into the bowels of the ship and make their way to the submarine docks. 

A mad dash across the windy flight deck with little regard to stealth and a lot of shooting takes him nearly to the missile site, until rounding a corner around the island to the other side of it, he comes face to face with three armed men. He’s just about to lower his gun and give them the impression of surrender, as their skulls explode in a series of deadly accurate shots. 007 waves at him from the stairwell leading down into the 17th deck. He runs for it and pulls the door closed behind him harder than necessary, shooting the electronic security panel next to it. 

“It’s sealed shut. What took you so long?” she asks with a tiny smile, but Bond can’t bring himself to banter with her. They have already failed. For all he knows, there might be nothing but a nuclear holocaust to return to. Or a deadly pandemic. 

She sees his expression and it dawns to her only now, the sheer horror.

“He didn’t…?”

“That’s what he said. His last words.”

“Dear god.”

“We keep moving on,” Bond urges, “we don’t know for sure.”

“Let’s sink this motherfucker,” she replies, and he thinks the crude language sounds foreign in her smooth tone. 

They successfully evade and fight their way back to the launch control station, when Bond remembers the watch again. 

He pulls it out of his pocket and asks, “Is this thing explosive, by any chance?”

She nods, “Your Q’s, by the way. He got us all one before he left.”

“I hope it takes more than a minute to go off,” he says and throws it to 007. “Set it up.”

“Timer,” she indicates, and rotates the frame. The numbers on the date display change to 05.00.00 “Enough?”

“We’ll make it,” he says, and she sets the time to 0:07. The numbers on the smaller display start ticking down, and she deposits it in place at the bottom of the tube, right next to the missile’s propellant charge. She takes one look up the length of it, where the top of the massive weapon almost reaches the hatch of the cell on the flight deck two floors above them, and they run. 

The time it took to set up the explosive has been enough for the enemy to locate them, and each deck down is again a hard-won fight. Bond tries to recall the route they took on the way up and track it back down towards the stern on the starboard side. They pass by the laboratories, and the doors have been left ajar in the chaos. A quick peek inside makes him wish for something to document the sight with. There are rows and rows of security-locked incubation cupboards full of petri dishes and vials; freezers and refrigerators of various sizes, microscopes and computers and stacks of papers littering the desks. A red alarm light above the door on the opposite side of the room is flickering. 

The door under the red light bursts open, and Bond releases a round into it before the men behind it even pour through. Only one of them falls. He shoots blindly behind himself, shattering glass and unimaginable horror onto the floor between them. No sane man would pass through it, but their pursuers are barely slowed down. 

007 throws a randomly picked up grenade into the room just as Bond clears the doorway, and he spares a thought as to how far the contamination will spread, but they are already well clear of the blast when it goes off. There’s screaming, and he’s disoriented, and the time is running out. He misses Q in his ear more than ever. 

Two more decks down, and they should be on the third level of the open docking bay, looking down at the vessel of their escape. 

The missile goes off in the tube. 

The enormous bulk of the ship rocks at the force of the blast, sending them both down to their hands and knees and grabbing anything solid for purchase. Bond imagines he can feel the powerful turbines sputter momentarily but keep up. A second blast throws him back off his feet as soon as he manages to get up, and he remembers the other missiles in the storage hold. The ship tilts on its axis and anything that isn’t bolted down starts sliding or falling down, down, down. 

There’s blood in his eyes again. He can’t get up. It’s bloody cold, and why isn’t Q telling him to put his back into it?

007 grabs him by his shirt and hooks another arm under his (the injured one, she can’t grip with it, his sluggish mind supplies), and bodily hauls him to a standing position. 

“We’re close, we can make it,” she shouts at him over the banging and groaning of the ship’s structures breaking and he finds the resolve to move his ass. 

One more staircase away from the third floor of the docking bay, and they are once more intercepted by Safin’s men. These are no longer mercenaries on a hunt; they are desperate rats fleeing the sinking ship, and they shoot without much aim, racing each other as much as Bond and 007 towards the salvation. It’s a chaotic conflict at the interception of narrow corridors, and Bond has to step over and on limp bodies to get through. 

For a moment everything goes quiet, and then he looks back at the sound of Nomi’s voice (it doesn’t sound like Double-O-Seven now). 

“Bond. I’m hit.”

“How bad?” He returns to her, and the fact that she doesn’t have the breath to answer is telling enough. She’s lying prone on her front, the wet floor soaked in blood, face buried in the crook of her arm, gasping for breath. How much of the blood is hers, he can’t tell, but it’s definitely not a gut wound… small mercy, that. 

Bond kneels next to her, hands tracing lightly over her taut frame, trying to locate the injury. The black combat gear and periodically failing lights make it difficult. The wetness is warm at her lower back, and he pulls his hands away. Bloody hell, things just got complicated. 

He doesn’t try to get her to stand up, it’s obvious that she can’t. 

“I’m going to lift you up,” he warns her, giving her a moment to brace for it, then he picks her up and carries her bridal-style over the dead bodies and into the final stairwell they need to descend to get into the docking bay. 

She’s heavier than she looks, and what concerns Bond is how limp she feels in his arms. When he examined her injury, she was rigid with tension; the laxness probably being a sign she’s going into shock. 

He’s about to exit the stairwell and open the door with some difficulty, but there’s resistance, and when the door gives, he’s flooded in cold salt water up to his waist. There are not enough curse words in his multilingual vocabulary to describe the feeling.

The ship is leaning to the starboard side, of course it would flood the lowest decks around the bay. Bond is a strong swimmer, but the docks have sunk deep below the surface in the churning waters, and the pull of the sinking ship is a death trap. He knows all this, but it matters little in their situation: he leaves the barely conscious 007 on the steps above the waterline and dives in. 

The currents make it difficult, but he manages to fight their submarine free of its restraints and grabs the handhold on the top hatch as it surges upwards towards light and air. It clangs against the docks’ railings, but he clings on as it breaches the roiling surface. He climbs up on the ledge near the stairwell, and goes to 007, attempting to carry her over to the vessel. 

She’s more aware now than when he’d left her, and she stops him with a wave of her hand. “What are you doing? Go! Get away from here.”

“Come on, I’ll carry you,” he says, “It’s just a little dip in the water.”

“No, you don’t get it! I won’t make it. I’ll just slow you down. You should go.”

He doesn’t answer, just lifts her up and wades into the water once more. Red spreads all around them as he makes his way on the ledge and takes a leap into the bottomless depths. It’s just a few quick strokes, but he’s exhausted when he reaches the submarine that has floated a little farther out. He doesn’t consciously recall how he does it, but Bond manages to get 007 into the rear seat and climb on board in front of her, close the hatch and speed away. 

The ship’s turbines create a strong pull under the ship, but he manages to maneuver them down into the black abyss, away from it and out of sight, finally free from the smoking wreckage of a warship.


	10. Chapter 10

The horizon is very vast and very empty as Q stares out of the window in the cockpit, sitting momentarily idle next to Blake. He’d lost contact with Bond and 007, and no amount of refreshing the connection and recalibrating it against the counter measures had helped with that. It still doesn’t work. They have either lost their tech again or the signal disturbance around the ship has been modified since he’s worked on it. Possibly both. 

The situation in London has been somewhat eased by his detailed explanation to M (and only M) on why Safin’s threat of a nuclear strike or worse would ultimately prove impotent. M had immediately called for double security on Wakefield prison, Faslane Naval Base that holds the Trident missiles and Buckingham Palace as a precaution anyway. Safin’s vendetta against Blofeld may have been personal, but his ideals were shared and orders obeyed, probably regardless of his death. Point Nemo is now visible on his satellite map, its stealth technology disabled in the blasts. It looks like it’s slowly sinking; at least incapacitated and an easy target once the US Navy reach it. 

Knowing only what M knew, Q’s still left in the dark about the ultimate fate of Bond and Nomi. The worry gnaws at his insides every passing minute that passes without contact. 

“Ben.” Blake suddenly speaks up from the pilot seat. He looks haggard, sleep deprived as they both are after 17 hours in the air. “Take over the rear turrets. We have pursuers.”

A cold spike of fear drives itself into his heart. He’s familiar with the systems on a technical level, but it has mostly been Blake’s hobby practising with them. Their freighter really isn’t a match for fighters, but they have come up with a bag of tricks to even out the playing field. 

“And here I was beginning to think we got away with it,” Q mutters tensely.

He focuses on the radar and sees two fighters approaching fast. One of them fires a missile at them, but he’s prepared, locks the target and fires. It explodes about halfway to its intended mark. Blake is a seriously good pilot, Q decides, as he manages to avoid being critically hit by rapid fire as he suddenly slows down and drops altitude, letting the fighters come close and storm past above them. They have no missiles in their artillery, but it’s possible to drop an enemy fighter with the turrets in close combat. 

Q aims, locks target, shoots. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and for a moment it feels like a computer game. He manages to get a few hits in, but it’s not enough. They will be shot down in a matter of moments. 

Then one of the enemy fighters ahead of them explodes in a brilliant ball of fire. 

“Holy shit!” Blake exclaims, taking in the massive squadron of 18 Lockheed Martin F35’s. The second enemy fighter bursts into flames, and two of the multi-purpose Carrier-based combat aircrafts veer away from the group, aligning themselves at the much bigger jet’s sides for escort. The rest of the American fleet are already gone. 

“From USS Abraham Lincoln, I think. It’s stationed in San Diego and patrolling these waters,” Q says, running a query on his laptop while still keeping an eye on the radar. Then the American pilot connects to their radio frequency and confirms it. Q sighs in relief.

“I’m going to take a look at the damage, watch the autopilot,” Blake tells Q and leaves the cockpit. Well. They’re probably more or less safe for the moment, and he doesn’t fancy falling to his death due to an unobserved break in some vital part, so he doesn’t protest. For all his bravado, Q suspects it’s still more that Blake, too, needs a moment to steady his nerves. They will be in Hawaii in less than two hours, and when he gets out of the plane, Q knows he’s going to  _ crash _ . 

What he did not anticipate, however, is the barrel of a gun pressing into the back of his head when Blake returns some fifteen minutes later. 

“Move over, Ben,” he orders in a tense voice. “We’re not going to Hawaii.”

“What the hell, are you mad?”

“You’re mad if you think I’m going to give myself up to the Americans.”

“You’re American! And a very important asset!”

“The CIA’s been after me for years, if you haven’t noticed! I’m not gonna spend the rest on my days rotting in jail, think about Jen!”

“You won’t go to jail, dumbass. Informants get paid, and protected. Hell, you could land a job with them with any luck.”

“They are right about now razing down our facilities in Dubai. What do you think, how’s it gonna turn out for Jen, huh? Saeed, Omar? If they’re even still alive! Someone like Jen is probably as likely to get killed by Safin’s men as end up as collateral fucking damage on a CIA mission report! I can’t risk it!”

“I sent her home, Mike. Told her to stay away before any of this started. I gave her my  _ cats _ , that should tell you something. She’s going to be  _ fine _ .”

“You fucking backstabbing  _ liar _ ! Why’d you have to bring her into it? If she’s hurt, I’ll fucking kill you! Now move,” he shoves Q out of the cockpit, into the passenger area and indicates a seat. “Sit down, hands behind your back and around the backrest.”

Q reacts fast, hitting Blake squarely in the nose. The sickening crack of bone reverberates down his arm, but it only serves to enrage the man. They fight, a brief bout made only more brutal by Q’s attempt to dislodge his opponent's hold by using the electric stunner in his watch. Blake catches the move, kicks him off-balance and twists his arm until he can press the display against Q’s own neck and deliver the shock. 

He’s drifting in and out of awareness, but he knows he’s being hauled into the seat and tied to it. The contents of his bag are scattered all over the aisle and Blake pulls out his laptop and phone, trashes them beyond recognition. Then he proceeds to tear down all his carefully prepared paperwork. 

“I’m not like them. I’ll let you go. There’s a private airfield in La Paz, an old military base that’s been repurposed by a friend of mine. I’ll take us there for a re-fuel, and that’s where you’ll be stepping off.”

Blake disappears into the cockpit and the plane lurches at the sudden change in course. There’s a sound of rapid fire from the front turrets, and out of the window to his left, Q catches a glimpse of a pilot opening his parachute. Their escorts had no chance against the sudden onslaught of friendly fire. He makes a quick calculation (as quick as his still shaken brain allows,) and determines they might be just in range for a rescue team to reach them on a helicopter. That leads to a conclusion that makes him want to cry: it’s almost another work day’s worth of sitting to Mexico. Even with all of their long-distance modifications, it’s an insanely long time in the air and the plane was not built for this. They are attempting a world record flight.

* *

He needs to go airborne and he doesn’t know  _ how _ , is the realisation that’s driving Bond mad. 007 is bleeding to death on the back seat and the submarine mode is simply too slow. They will never, ever reach the Hickam base in time. He’s tried to get her to talk, instruct him, but she’s too out of it to be of any help. He tries and fails and tries again, getting something wrong every time despite what he knows of both planes and submarines. He’s tried to reach Q and M through the integrated comm unit countless times, but it’s still just static.

It’s been maybe an hour, maybe more. He’s lost his sense of time.

“Bond,” he hears the scratchy voice from behind. He turns fully around to look, and she’s opened her eyes, just a bit. “Give me a gun.”

Oh, no, not this. He’s not equipped to deal with  _ this _ . 

“Nomi, I need you to tell me how to lift this thing off the water. What am I missing?”

“Give me the gun and I’ll tell you.” She’s breathing hard through clenched teeth. 

“No, listen. Please don’t ask me for this. Just--”

“No,  _ you _ listen! I  _ can’t feel my legs _ , James!” She chokes on tears, but goes on. “Two bullets in the back, it fucking hurts. I’m gonna bleed out. Just wanna make it quick.”

“It’s a  _ good _ thing it hurts, you know that.  _ Please _ , tell me what to do!”

She’s quiet for a while, lying back against the seat, eyes closed. Bond thinks she may have passed out again, but then she speaks, a bit more calmly. 

“Eject skis, accelerate to fifty, eject wings. Disengage turbine. Lever’s under the seat. It activates the combustion engine. Afterburner on, proceed to takeoff, retract skis.”

“Copy.” Bond tries to do everything in the correct order, and finally the sleek sea bird shoots smoothly up into the sky. (Great, definitely great, he muses.)

An indefinite time later, it becomes apparent the fuel will not be enough to carry them all the way to the US base. 007 is once again quiet and motionless, but she’s still breathing. There’s only one option that Bond can think of that can save her, and it comes at a risk of detection by the enemy just as likely as their rescuers. He makes the mayday call, and after careful thinking, manages to dive and switch back to the fusion-powered submarine engine. He keeps to the surface and holds the course towards Hawaii. 

He’s sure he’s just about to lose the nearly comatose 007 when the radar picks up a dot in the distance. The radio crackles to life soon after, and the pilot of the US Navy helicopter greets him with triumphant cheer. It’s contagious despite the grave situation of his fellow operative, and he allows himself a deep sigh of relief. Hope, he thinks, is such a beautiful feeling. He wishes he were better acquainted with it. 

* * 

Hope is also short-lived, he learns some time later, when they have arrived at the Tripler Medical Center Army Base in Honolulu. 

It’s one of the most sophisticated medical facilities Bond has ever been in, and befitting its role as an international UN Peace Operations Institute, seems to be quite adapted to dealing with Bond and his kind. It’s a refreshing change from the regular hospitals he’s developed an intense dislike for over his career. Nobody is pestering him, or wasting time with asking pointless questions. 007 is just being prepared for surgery and he’s been unceremoniously dumped to wait until someone has the time to check on his more insignificant injuries.

That means he finally has the chance to contact HQ and speak with M. 

It’s a very brief discussion, mostly due to the fact that M is busy and there’s a host of MP’s in the same room with him, but Bond is thankful for that. He feels like the ground is falling away from beneath his feet at the news. Immense relief for the confirmation that Safin hadn’t apparently succeeded in destroying anything more in England than his demonstrations did at Northwood and GCHQ changes quickly into a kind of numb shock when he asks about Q. 

M is silent for a moment too long, and then he says, voice heavy with regret:

“ _ Missing, presumed dead. Hickam air traffic control reported the loss of two of their fighter aircrafts to an unforeseen attack some 400 miles south-east of Hawaii. They were the ones escorting our plane. I spoke with Shaw up until half an hour or so before the incident. The loss of all contact coincides with the time time of attack. _ ”

Bond is quiet, so M continues, “ _ They have sent an evac team to the coordinates, but they have so far found nothing, to my knowledge. You know it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. _ ”

“I see,” he finally manages. Safin’s men were desperate fools like their leader, and Bond hopes they all drop dead like flies before they can even find solid earth to land on. 

M tells him he’s sorry and to get some rest, and it makes him feel sick to his stomach. He’s never been good at dealing with personal loss (and this one is very personal, even if he’d never voice it aloud--) and being coddled by his superior officer is almost worse. Almost.

He’s not satisfied with the uncertainty that settles inside of him. He feels like he should run off to look for answers and find the remains of the destroyed aircrafts, see with his own eyes if there’s evidence. But it’s impossible, and the rescue team is already doing that, and he hasn’t slept for how many days…. he’s lost count ages ago. It’s just too much. He can practically feel his mind go numb and heart fall into a state of permafrost. He should know better than to care by now. Everyone he’s ever cared for ends up either betraying him or dead. 

Bond sits through a basic medical examination, gives a very short and very unwilling report, and retreats to the room he’s given, succumbing to sleep before his head hits the pillow. It takes too much of his remaining mental endurance to try and limit the information he gives the Americans to a bare minimum while still answering their questions, and he finally snaps at them. But that’s not on the record, because these people here know how to deal with Bond and his kind.

He wakes up in the morning to a vaguely familiar presence in his room, and he must look comical in his surprise at seeing his CIA contact, Paloma, standing there with a bunch of prints in her hands. 

“Good morning, James,” she smiles brightly, “I’m glad to inform you that your agent’s surgery was successful and she’s expected to survive. However,” and Bond finally manages to tear his eyelids open enough to see a sharp-dressed, handsome young man in a dark suit standing behind her, “my partner, Mr. Ash has interviewed the pilot of one of the fighters the rescue team has found alive. The man claims they were shot down by the aircraft they were escorting. You know what that means.”

It takes for a while for Bond to catch up, but when he does, it feels like the world just tilted on its axis. He had forgotten for a moment that Q was presumed dead. Now with that information, it looked more like he had turned on them, and if the CIA thought that, he would set them straight.   
  
“Blake was on that plane,” he grinds out, “he piloted it. What, you thought that Q, that Shaw fired at them? That’s ridiculous! Blake must have hijacked the plane to escape.”

“We have our orders, Mr. Bond,” Ash says firmly, “and from now on they include formal cooperation with you in locating him and bringing him in. Your M has authorized it. Our risk assessment team has rated Shaw above Blake and if they have teamed up it may pose a clear and present danger.”

“I will stay here for now, have a talk with 007 once she is well enough,” Paloma says, and continues for her partner, “James, you and Logan have plane tickets to Mexico City. Based on the observed change in course by the rescued pilot, and any reasonable distance, really, we must assume that they are heading to the coast of Central America. Blake had business in Mexico City, those connections will be listed on your files here. You will fly out in three and a half hours so better hurry up!” She keeps smiling that cheerful smile that now grates on Bond’s nerves. 

If Blake has killed or in way harmed Q, he’s a dead man. 

If Logan Ash even tries to, he’s going to wish he were. 

“Sure. Excuse me while I change and grab some breakfast. Then we’ll do a little planning,” he says placatingly. 

An hour later, Bond is respectably dressed, passably nourished and on his way to the Honolulu International Airport. It’s located conveniently on the same premises with Joint Base Pearl Harbour-Hickam, just a couple of miles down to the shore from the Medical Center up on the hills. He walks at a brisk pace; although he still has plenty of time, he needs to account for possible trouble on the way. After all, Mr. Ash has been prevented from accompanying him as planned, and Bond is not quite sure if the toilet stall at the Medical Center with an ‘out of order’ sign hung on its door is going to hold him for long. He just hopes he didn’t terribly overdose on the sedative, because accidentally offing a fellow operative you’re supposed to be working with  _ would _ have very unpleasant consequences, even for him. 

He makes a stop at a deserted street corner before he reaches the Airport, and searches his phone for a Q-Branch number he hasn’t called in over five years. 

To his great relief, R picks up instantly. 

He wastes no time on pleasantries. “R, be a dear and do me a favour. No, not me, per se, this one is for Q. Yes, him! If you ever cared for him one bit, do it!” R sounds calm as always, but there’s definitely a hint of worried reluctance as she tells him to go on. “Find me all the flight data available on the arrivals to following airports, emergency landing sites and private airfields…” he lists all the possibilities he can think of on the map within the range their plane could possibly still fly without having to refuel (which is not a very long list and he doesn’t know if it should be a relief or not) “...and anything strange that might have shown up on radar that doesn’t even look like a plane. They’re flying blind and possibly with some form of stealth technology. The aircraft is a non-standard model, similar to the carrier jet involved in a scrapped RAF project some years ago. Q would have talked about the project if not the specifics..”

“I know what you’re referring to,” R confirmed, I’ll see what I can do. How much time till you need it?”

“Half an hour”, Bond said, already resuming his walk towards the Airport. “And arrange me a flight there. Anywhere in the region will do, whatever route gets me there the fastest.”

“I’ll get back to you in twenty,” R says and hangs up on him.


	11. Chapter 11

It’s not like any airport Q has visited before. The buildings are visibly old and not very well looked-after, the paint markings on the runway faded. There is not much traffic, but a couple of trucks are unloading their cargo in front of a warehouse and there are a few people coming and going around the flight control building. There’s a large hangar on the side of the airfield, where Q sees a couple of freight planes and one smaller aircraft, covered with tarp. 

All in all, it’s a very unimpressive sight, and he’s rather thankful to have landed in one piece, considering the dents and cracks in the asphalt. 

Being alive is of course not something to be taken for granted in his situation. Wrists chafed bloody but now free, legs numb from sitting for hours and hours in an uncomfortable position, he tries not to stumble as he’s escorted out of the plane by Blake, who walks slightly behind him, close enough to touch, gun pressed surreptitiously between his shoulder blades. 

They walk past several workers in the main hall of the flight control center and no one pays much attention to them. Blake waves a greeting here and there, obviously familiar with the place. There’s one peculiar thing about this whole setting, and it’s the state-of-the-art surveillance equipment that Q’s trained eye spots along the way. It has been a small, out of the way military post, and whoever bought it afterwards didn’t pay much attention to the maintenance of the facility. It’s not meant to be a high profile business. But something warrants the security measures MI6 would be proud of? He’s absolutely sure that this place is worth investigating once he’s out and back in London. 

Blake is done with talking to him, but he gives occasional directions and soon they’re outside at the large gates. The fence is surrounded by barbed wire and electronically guarded. Given time, he could maybe….

The thought is cut short by the gun digging deeper into his skin, as Blake shoves him for a good measure. He punches in the code and the gates open; the dirt road ahead of him is dry as a desert. Lined here and there with scarce vegetation and occasional run-down houses, it seems to lead out into the setting sun.    
  
“Get out!” Blake barks, and closes the gates behind Q. 

He walks for a while until the mostly white-painted, box-shaped houses are not so dilapidated anymore, and instead of one here and there, they line the road side by side, narrow alleys criss-crossing between them. By some street signs and small business advertisements on the roadsides Q can tell he’s arrived in San Pedro, a small, quiet town on the outskirts of the city of La Paz. 

He stops walking in front of a long stretch of a graffiti-painted brick wall, surrounding a property behind. A flickering neon sign casts a pale glow from across the street, otherwise it’s starting to get dark. He should find a hotel room, he thinks, but there’s the dilemma: he doesn’t have any money, his credit card, phone, laptop, tablet, or anything of value on him. 

It’s bloody Mexico, how is he going to survive? Even his knowledge of Spanish is elementary at best. Technically he’s still on the run and with or without Safin, those people are still dangerous. And he’s just too tired to even  _ think _ . 

Maybe he’ll be dead by morning if he just sits here and waits for it. 

He sits down on the pavement and leans against the wall, resting his forehead on his knees and closes his eyes. They sting from lack of sleep and all the dust. He feels like crying,  _ wants to _ , craves for the release, but he’s out of tears to shed for himself. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s sat there having a breakdown, when there’s suddenly something wet and solid poking at his ear and temple. He raises his head and blinks. There’s a big, black dog looming above him, staring right at him. For a chilling moment he’s afraid to even breathe, but then the dog wags its feathery tail and pokes at him again with his cool nose. Q smiles at it and offers his hand to sniff. 

“Hello, boy, guess you’re a friend then?” he says, and the dog is happy to agree. Q turns to look at the sound of approaching footsteps, and there’s a young girl of maybe ten or twelve running around the corner, carrying a leash. She’s scolding the big dog in Spanish, feisty and angry but clearly relieved to have found it. She pulls the dog away from him by the collar and puts it back on the leash. Then she takes a good look at Q and frowns. She asks him something, maybe if he needs any help. 

That’s when his higher brain functions kick in enough to communicate that  **yes** , that is exactly what he needs, and by help he means a  _ phone _ .    
  
“El teléfono?”, he tries, mimicking a phone call with his hand. 

The girl looks at him suspiciously and again asks something, of which Q can make out ‘americano’. 

“Inglés,” he tries, and apparently it’s the right thing to say because the girl’s frown disappears and she digs a mobile out of her backpack. It’s a fairly new Huawei. Wonders never cease. 

She offers the phone to him and he waits for her to nod in confirmation before thanking her in English. The girl smiles at him as he takes it. The dog watches him intently, now clearly in a different mood, more protective as he’s on the leash and guarding his little girl. It’s late for her to be out alone, but perhaps not so unsafe after all. 

He stands up and walks a short distance away for some sense of privacy, then he dials Moneypenny’s number and waits. 

And waits.

And waits. 

He’s starting to panic just a little when the other end of the line comes to life. 

“ _ Who is this? _ ” It’s the familiar voice he hasn’t heard in such a long time. He almost sobs in relief. 

“Eve. It’s me. I need your help.”

“ _ Nick? Nick Wallace? Where are you? What’s happened? _ ” He smiles at that. Trust Eve to be clever and cautious. 

“Yeah. I’m in bloody Mexico. Somewhere in… around La Paz. Don’t ask how. I need to get home but I have nothing on me, no money, no phone, no access to a computer…”

“ _ Dear god. Have you called M? _ ”

“No! I said I don’t have a phone. This… this one is borrowed. I need to return it soon. Can you get me out of here?”

“ _ Mhmm… can you get to Tijuana? _ ”

“Suppose so… why?”

“ _ I’ll come and meet you there. _ ”

“....What?”

“ _ I’m still in the States right now. San Diego, to be exact. Got stuck here for a bit, ran into local cops. Just preparing to go back to London. You’re in luck, dear _ .”

“When and where?”

“ _ Tomorrow evening? Can you make it to the Tijuana Airport? Cross Border Xpress would probably be easiest for me and we could fly from there. _ ”

“I will make it. Can’t say how long it will take or if I’m able to contact you before I get there, but we’ll find each other.”

“ _ I’ll be there as soon as possible, waiting for you. Call me if you can. Stay safe… Nick. _ ”

“Eve. If I don’t make it in three days--”

“ _ Nonsense. You’ll make it in one. And I’ll come and get you anywhere if you run into trouble. Just get the word to me and-- _ ”

“Alright. We’ll meet tomorrow evening at the airport. I won’t come to the border crossing point, it’ll be constantly monitored. But I’ll find you. Trust me. I’ve got to go. Believe it or not, I think my ride just arrived.”

He disconnects before she can tell him to be careful and stay safe again, and hands the phone back to the girl. She offers him a candy, and he accepts, thanking her distractedly in English. He’s suddenly aware of an almost painful hunger, but there’s a very interesting truck parked in front of a small electronics vendor at the end of the street. He waves a goodbye to the girl and her dog, and watches them disappear in the direction she had come from. 

He returns his focus on the truck. It has Baja California licence plates and the ads on the sides of the container include the address of the business, located in Tijuana. 

The driver is unloading boxes that look like electronics into the warehouse it’s parked in front of. He can see into the container, noticing it’s nearly empty. He has to act now, if he’s going to try. 

He walks casually towards the truck, as if he were just going to walk around and past it. But the next time the driver disappears into the warehouse with his pile of boxes, he jumps up into the container and quickly ducks behind a few high-packed pallets still tightly strapped in place. He takes a look at the waybill on the nearest pallet and finds it addressed to Tijuana. For once he feels lucky. The truck could be returning there directly. 

His good luck holds as the driver returns and slams the container doors shut without checking the interior. 

The truck stops for the night after maybe an hour of driving. Q curls up on the dirty floor of the container and tries to sleep. He’s a little nauseous from the shaky drive and not being able to see where they’re going, and although it's Mexico, the night is quite chilly. 

Some time later, he’s jolted awake as the truck resumes its journey. 

During the day it gets very hot, and he takes off his jacket, rolls up the shirt sleeves and opens the top buttons. He would like to get rid of all the dirty, disgusting, torn clothing he’s worn for three days straight, and wouldn’t that be a sight when the driver comes to open the container. 

As it happens, when the truck finally stops that evening, he’s almost passed out from hunger and dehydration. It takes a moment to register that the container doors are open and the pallet in front of him is being hauled away. 

The worker unloading the cargo jumps and screams in fright, and Q grabs his jacket and runs. 

His flight takes him through an industrial park and into the busy center of the city. It’s downtown Tijuana, chaos is part of it’s very spirit. Nobody cares. He finds a decent public restroom and washes the grime off his face and hands; tastes the water carefully before drinking more of it than a sip. 

Then he looks at a tourist info map, the red dot telling him in English, ‘you’re here’. Luck is again on his side, as it seems he’s not too far from the airport: only a few miles, and after freshening up, he feels like he can do it tonight. 

His feet are killing him by the time he sees the signs to the terminals and the bright airport lights steal the cover of darkness from him. He becomes aware of the security cameras and guards, like a criminal on the run. Trying to act perfectly normal, he walks in after a group of people entering the cross border terminal. 

He’s just spotted the signs to the CBX skybridge, when he’s alerted by the click of heels on the tiled floor. He turns around just in time to catch Eve as she tackles him in a bear hug, and for a blessed minute they cling to each other for dear life. 

Q pulls away first, apologising for his dirty clothes. 

“I don’t care about your clothes,” Eve says, torn between laughter and tears, “You absolute idiot. Why are you crying?”

He swipes at the wetness on his own face and shrugs. “Why are  _ you  _ crying?”

She pulls a thick envelope out of her purse and gives it to Q. “Passport, money, flight tickets. And I have a hotel room booked for us. We’ll find a store that’s still open and get you some clothes. God, you look done in.” 

Q sighs. “I’ll live.” That reminds him….

“Have you heard anything from Bond, or Double-O-Seven?”

“I’ve talked with M. How much do you know?”

“Not now…. Just tell me, are they alive? Safe?”

Moneypenny pauses for a moment, and Q’s heart is suddenly in his throat. That’s not how it was supposed to end. But then Eve relieves his worst fears.

“They made it to Hawaii, I hear. Bond, relatively unscathed; Nomi…. was in a critical condition when they arrived. M believed she had a fair chance, but… I asked him to tell me. He hasn’t called yet.”

Moneypenny gets them a rental car, and they head out of the airport for the night. She keeps pestering him for details, and he concedes, deciding to let her know everything.

“I lost contact with them after they went in. Stayed on the comms just in case and kept the line open to Six. The last I heard, M said there had been at least one direct death in the London strike and all connections at the GCHQ were still down. No sign of our agents since the explosions on the ship. Then…. we’d flown for hundreds of miles, I thought we were clear. Two fighters came after us from Point Nemo. Americans intervened and we got two of theirs for escort. M knows, up to this point, I suppose…” Moneypenny nods, and he continues. “But you know how it is… trust no one. Blake; he turned on me and I wasn’t expecting it, couldn’t do much about it. He put a gun to my head. In a fucking plane…”

Eve covers her mouth with her hand to stop herself from gasping aloud. She’d always been empathetic, and Q supposes she’d known about his dislike of flying. But the fact remains that he’d been incapacitated and dropped off somewhere in bloody Mexico, and his continued survival was more due to Blake’s so-called decency not to put a bullet in his head than anything Q had done. He’d been completely useless and even indirectly responsible for a lot of the carnage Safin had caused. He feels wretched, and not just physically. 

“He took the plane to an old military base somewhere near La Paz. Owned by an acquaintance of his, he told. It looked more like a shipping port of something illegal than a respectable business, if you ask me. Smuggler of American guns, most likely. He destroyed all my equipment, pointed a gun at me again and told me to fuck off.”

He continues talking as Moneypenny drives. They briefly stop to shop for necessities and find their way to the hotel room they’re sharing. It feels good to be able to just talk freely after two years of watching every word. 

He showers and goes to bed, listening to Eve talk on the phone with M. When she disconnects the call, she announces the news that 007 has been operated and she’s still alive and expected to make it. However, there will be permanent physical damage, and M had been hesitant to say anything further at this point. He had been relieved to hear Q was safe and that for once, Bond’s instincts were wrong. Whatever that means. Eve can’t elaborate, because M hadn’t been specific, but a feeling of disappointment settles inside of him nonetheless. Whatever he’d meant by it, clearly Bond had said something to indicate distrust either in his abilities or integrity. It’s not something he wants to talk about, so he steers the conversation back to Eve’s mission. She tells him about her ‘errand’ in the US, about Madeleine and losing her on the chase. 

Eventually Eve changes and plops down on her bed as well, and they both stare at the ceiling in silence for a while. Q thinks about why they all do this, why they are willing to risk so much, their health and even their very lives. 

“I think I can understand why Blake did it,” he says finally, “I gave him no choice but to help me, so he did. But when he had the chance, he took the greater risk of going back, because he cared about someone. Cared about her more than his own safety.”

“That’s not an excuse,” Eve scoffs.

“No, but it’s a reason. It’s understandable,” he replies, and they fall into silence again. 


	12. Chapter 12

“Name and affiliation?” A guard barks at Bond in heavily accented english at the gates of the anonymous airfield, somewhere south of San Pedro, Baja California Sur, Mexico. 

“James Bond, formerly of the British intelligence service MI6. I’m here to see Dr. Michael Blake. I have urgent business with him. He told me he’d arrived here last night.”

The gate opens, and Bond drives in. He’d rented a black, modern SUV Jeep Cherokee, which he’d thought would impress the type of people he’d need to convince to get in. They might run a license plate search and identify it as a rental, but the first impressions were often what counted. He lets his gun holster show freely under an opened jacket.

It had been a blessedly uneventful drive from the Los Cabos Airport; the fastest route that R could arrange for him. He’d read through the CIA files again and rather than looking into Blake’s contacts in Mexico City, he’d spotted a man named De León who was listed as the owner of a small-scale air freight service in San Pedro. Combined with the last known flight data R had been able to dig up, he’d known he had found their destination. 

Bond is quite sure that Blake would already be gone, but he’s more interested in finding out what happened to Q and maybe getting a clue of their current whereabouts. They might even be holding him for leverage or information, depending on what Blake’s association to these people was. 

He parks the SUV in front of the main building and waits for a pair of men to jog up to him from the inside. They ask for his business again in broken english, and he enjoys the dismay on their faces as he answers in decent spanish. 

He is led into a windowless meeting room with an oval table in the middle surrounded by a dozen chairs. There’s a desk in the corner, a copying machine, an old-fashioned file cabinet and other office equipment, as well as a whiteboard on the wall. All of it looks aged, except the small monitor mounted on the wall above the desk. It rotates surveillance footage from at least a dozen, maybe more, CCTV cameras around the premises. 

All of this Bond takes in in a matter of seconds, and re-formulates his plan. He asks the men again in polite spanish if he could also have a word with De León, as his business concerns both of them. The one who had spoken to him leaves to find them, but Bond is told to wait, accompanied by the other. He clears his throat and coughs, apologizing for the trouble, but he could really use a drink after the long journey. The man glares daggers at him, and he’s almost sure he’ll have to resort to violence after all, but then he grunts and marches out of the door, locking it behind him. 

Immediately Bond rises from his chair and goes to search for the monitor controls. Luckily it’s a simple design, REW and FW buttons on the frame like in an old VCR player. It’s quick work to scan through the current morning’s footage and when he doesn’t find anything of interest, go to the menu and click on yesterday’s date. That’s where things get interesting. 

At 23:38, the plane he is looking for slowly rolls into the hangar and the doors slide closed. 

He rewinds the recording further and sees that the man who took the plane to the hangar was not Blake. But he  _ is there,  _ clearly identifiable in several frames over the course of maybe three hours. Walking about, talking to someone - possibly De León, eating in the staff quarters. 

So far he hasn’t seen Q, and it occurs to him that he’d scanned past two planes taking off this very morning. One of them might have been Blake. They might have switched planes. He doesn’t have very much time but he decides to check that. Going back to the current date, he finds footage of both take-offs. However, as the hangar apparently isn’t monitored from the inside, or at least it’s not on the rotation of this screen, he can’t make out who the pilot was, or who had boarded the planes. 

He switches to live feed, quickly scanning around if someone is already approaching him. How long could it take to find your boss and convince him to see a suspicious surprise visitor? 

It doesn’t matter if he has ten seconds, a minute, or five minutes alone, he still needs to look further. Far enough to see them touch down on the runway. And there it is. The plane bounces and rattles slightly at the landing and stops rather abruptly, the runway barely enough for the size and sheer mass of it. But Blake is clearly a very skilled pilot and pulls it off without incident. Minutes tick past in fast forward motion, and finally the plane door on the screen opens. 

He recognises Q instantly, although he keeps his head down. He walks on shaky legs and looks pale and uncomfortable, no wonder. Blake appears at his shoulder the very moment Q steps on the ground, and what he sees turns Bond’s blood to ice in his veins. The man sidles up very close to Q and wraps his arm around him under his jacket, maybe offering support, or just comfort, it doesn’t matter. They walk side by side like that out of the frame. 

He switches back to the live feed and sits back into his chair, waiting. He’s seen quite enough. He’s shaken to his core by the indication that it was never Q’s intention to finish the mission on their side, or even return to work for Six like he’d assumed. It had been his wishful thinking, nothing else, and M had tried to warn him about it, maybe even Felix.  _ Blake  _ was the one who’d been with Q when he and 007 had found him at Intelscape in Dubai. Blake was the one he’d involved in his scheme to expose Safin’s plans, and sending the intel to MI6 was just the convenient way to do it. Bond and 007 had been nothing but an obstacle on his way. 

He remembers M’s words about blood on Q’s hands and thinks about the escorting fighters they had shot down. Allies. Everyone’s out only for their own profit in the end. 

The door opens, and three men come in. Bond pulls himself together and greets De Léon in a gruff but polite manner. He asks about Blake, who, he predictably hears, has departed in the morning. De León starts to get annoyed when he asks where and on what business, and Bond doesn’t pursue that line of questioning. It doesn’t matter.    
  
Instead, he asks a few questions about De León’s business and fishes out the information that he’d known Blake for a long time and usually shipped whatever goods needed shipping from the US black market to Valparaiso in Chile. “Electronics, sometimes chemicals”, he says, shrugging, “and weapons. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it. Lots and lots of weapons and ammunition. We’re Mexican, Mr. Bond, not gung-ho yankees, but we don’t conceal our guns.”   
  
Bond just nods, lowers his voice as if to speak confidentially, and tells De Léon that it all sounds good and they will hear of him again once he’s completed his dealings with Blake. They shake hands, and he’s escorted back to his car.    
  
He drives out of the gates, and as the dusty road takes him around the perimeter fence, he remembers R’s parting words as she’d sent him the e-ticket to Mexico:  _ Do try to make it a less explosive visit this time, Bond.  _

He takes off his watch, the one he’d treasured and actually made an effort to keep intact for more than five years. He sets the timer to seven seconds, steps out of the car and flings it over the fence. He doesn’t look back to see it go off. 

There’s one more thing for him to do, and the sooner it’s done, the better. He fishes his phone out of his pocket while driving and calls M. Predictably, he gets an earful for going ‘rogue’ again, but he couldn’t give less of a fuck about some CIA moron and his very unhappy time knocked out in a locked toilet booth. Instead, he gets straight to the point, shutting up M in the middle of a sentence. In other circumstances, he would take pride in that. 

“Q’s not dead. He deserted. Took off with Blake.” He gives a brief rundown of the events, description and coordinates of the facility, as well as what he learned from De León. M asks if he knows where they are headed, and if Bond is going to follow. He’s quiet for a moment too long, as M prompts again,

“ _ Bond? _ ”

“No. And I don’t think it matters. He gave you everything you need to bring down Safin’s plot. I don’t think we’ll ever hear from them again.”

“The CIA’s still looking for then,” M points out. “Or looking for Blake, at least. Even if they’d let Shaw off the hook for providing that intel, they can’t possibly--”

“It doesn’t matter!” Bond is getting angry and not particularly inclined to try and restrain himself. “He’s got Q with him, so he’s as good as gone. They’ll laugh at the CIA morons somewhere in bloody Tahiti and no one will ever know.”

“ _ So what are you going to do? _ ”

“I don’t know. Get sloshed.”

“ _ Bond. You’re expected to report in--- _ ”

He pulls up and drops the phone out of the window as he switches to reverse, crushing it under the wheel. 


	13. Chapter 13

It’s 5:46 a.m. when Mallory’s phone finally rings. He’s been trying to contact Moneypenny since late last night, when Bond had called. It had been a hellish couple of days and he’d felt like he’d barely managed to keep his head above water. Tanner had taken up most of his responsibilities at the office, and without that support, he’s sure the whole of MI6 would have already collapsed.

Since Safin had commandeered the live security feed of 10 Downing Street and broadcasted his ultimatum on every screen in the Prime Minister’s Office, Mallory’s hands have been full. MI6 is a more organised chaos, mostly thanks to Tanner, but he’s never been running as non-stop from one place to another in his life. It’s insane. 

The Intelligence and Security Committee is debating whether he should be removed from office. They need him there three times a day, but still four out of the nine members are shouting for his dismissal, the chairman included. Antony Burns, the Foreign Secretary, seems to have come to his senses and could be an ally, and they have discussed at length what GCHQ has so far been able to uncover from Q’s… Shaw’s files. The indications are staggering, as is Shaw’s solution of hijacking the computer-generated launch codes of the world’s most dangerous strategic weapons. Safin’s influence apparently ran as deep as some key positions in the Trump administration and US military, and his threat of directing the launch of an American nuclear weapon had been entirely real. Shaw had known about the possibility and infiltrated the system that generated the launch codes daily, changing the algorithm so that the codes generated did not match with the ones sent to the president - which were also the ones leaked to Safin. Consequently, Shaw had been the only one in possession of the working launch codes. It must be covered up with utmost care before the CIA digs deep enough into the failings of their national security to notice. 

The Defence Secretary, on the other hand, is out for his blood as always, and he’s bloody  _ sure _ that Miranda is whispering in his ear, because that’s how low his cursed ex would stoop to make his life hell. Dropping Mallory from her name and going only by her ancestral family name had apparently made her that much more popular with certain politicians vying for influence. 

The PM had made good on his promise and ordered an investigation on MI6’s unauthorised operations, which could, theoretically, lead to him being Court Martialed. He has hope that the return of 007 and Bond, as well as the statements from the CIA and other SIS operatives currently working on different leads might help with that. If they find enough solid connections to link the mission with previous operations, branching out after Safin could be explained under the same mandate… They are currently working on two strong leads connecting Safin to incidents where MI6 agents had come in contact with suspected SPECTRE agents only to find their marks already decimated by someone else. One of them involved the death of an ex-MI5 operative whom they hadn’t been able to irrefutably link to Blofeld until Shaw’s work inside Safin’s organisation had proved it. 

Mallory answers the phone on the way to his car, already headed to his office well before sunrise, after only a few short hours of sleep he’d allowed himself. 

“Moneypenny, thank god! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve tried to call you?”   
  
“ _ In fact I do, there are 19 missed calls on my phone and 16 of them are from you _ ,” she says a little affronted, “ _ thanks to the efficiency of the local police force. Didn’t Tanner tell you _ ? 

“Where the hell have you been? I was held up with--, ah, never mind! Bond has gone rogue. Again. I got a message from Leiter last night that he’d incapacitated the CIA operative assigned with him and run off. After Shaw.”

“ _ Makes sense, one of my missed calls was from Leiter, too _ ,” Moneypenny says, and Mallory notes a curious lightness in her tone. She sounds almost… happy?   
  
“But that’s not all,” he continues, before she has a chance to get a word in. “Somehow, he finds himself in Mexico, infiltrates an old military base that’s used by some gun traffickers and finds out Shaw has deserted with Blake. He called me three, four hours ago. I ordered him to return. We’ll see.”

“ _ What nonsense is that? _ ” She asks, a little perplexed now. “ _ As I was just trying to tell you, I have the best news. I’m sitting right here in the same hotel room with Benjamin. He’s literally right next to me. He called me for assistance and I went over to Tijuana instead of flying home. Do you want to talk with him? _ ”

He’s speechless for a moment, until he manages to decline for now, asking for Eve to summarize their situation instead. She’s good at that, and he needs some space to think. He sits in the idling car and remembers how Bond had ended their phone call. He’d heard the crack on the other end of the line and the crushing sound before it disconnected. 

“Eve,” he says once she’s finished, “You might just have saved me. All of Six, possibly. Come home safe and soon, the both of you. I need you here.” He’s sure it didn’t come out professionally like he meant, but damn if he hasn’t felt lost in the pandemonium without Eve. 

“Oh, and I want you to know…. they called from the hospital; Double-O-Seven made it through the surgery. However, she’s been badly injured, from what I understood, they removed bullet fragments from her spine and kidney. They wouldn’t say how… how much permanent damage she’d sustained.”

“ _ I… well, that’s… good, I guess? I’m just happy that she’s coming home. I’ll see you soon, then. It’s getting late here. Our flight to London leaves at nine in the morning. _ ”

“I’m already lost with the time conversions on this mission,” he admits. “Will you need transport from the airport? I can have Tanner get you a car.”  
  
“ _Please do._ _Thank you,_ ” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. It warms him from the inside. “ _Take care._ ” 

“You too, Eve”. It isn’t professional at all. 


	14. Chapter 14

Six days is a very long time to wait for news. Wait for a phone call, an SMS, any form of contact. Waiting for James Bond to walk into MI6 like he owns the place, as if he’d never been gone at all. Or to appear like a ghost; unexpectedly and unannounced in the periphery of his vision, poking at some prototype or shifting through the more personal contents of his office as he’d sometimes done with the pretext of returning equipment after missions.    
  
He remembers the last time all too well. Has it really been almost five years? Back then, after six days he hadn’t even wondered yet, he’d been absolutely convinced Bond would be back sooner or later. Oh, he’d felt the sting of a broken heart despite his better knowledge, but he’d never doubted his return.   
  
Then it was later, and it still never happened. Q can’t pinpoint the exact moment when he’d stopped waiting. 

This time he waits because the James Bond he’d encountered in Dubai was a very different man than the one who’d driven out of the Q-Branch garage on that cursed day years ago. He could analyze the differences, but he won’t do that to himself. He just knows something has shifted in both of them. Bond won’t be back because he wants to be, or because he’s somehow developed an ability to abide by the orders. He’ll come back, because that hollow inside of him can only be filled by whatever addictive poison it is that Six pours into their souls to make them into its weapons. It’s the same with himself, he’s noticed; the longer he’d spent away, the louder the dark void had howled.

His little identity crisis isn’t helping. Going around his old workplace, being called a name that isn’t his, trying to call someone else  _ Q….  _ That really is the ultimate insult he doesn’t need in his life. The uncertainty of his own future and the stress of the present, including the fact that he can’t go to his own home, because the address is well known to some people who might be counted as enemies now. 

He’s had the questionable pleasure of working with the current Q on decrypting and analysing the data he had sent to the GCHQ, mentally cataloguing his various shortcomings, but he’d flat-out refused to allow the guy anywhere near his personal servers and other equipment his former Q-Branch minions had retrieved from his flat. He also refuses to give them a finer introduction to his Mind Reader code, because there’s currently no one in the whole world he’d trust with it, or the secrets he’d extracted with it, for that matter... That’s just as well, because it looks like no one, except maybe Eve, trusts him completely either. He’s an informant to them now, nothing more, and he can practically feel the crosshairs settle on the back of his head every time he requests access to some sensitive information or voices an opinion that might be contrary especially to the current Q’s. 

R seems to be afraid of him, which is ridiculous. He tries to talk to her, and she assures him she’s very glad to have him back, even if it’s only temporary. Is it? That’s what they all seem to think. 

Officially, he’s supervised by Tanner, and the subtle undercurrent of mistrust beneath Bill’s friendly demeanor cuts deep. It’s like Tanner is holding back, waiting for the bomb to drop: what kind, he’s not really sure, but he thinks Tanner may still expect him to be held accountable for illegal actions and doesn’t want to get involved. 

M is mostly not even present, tied up with politics and international relations and trying to save his own skin - and once again, the reputation of MI6. 

So, when it happens on day six that Bond walks into the main lobby -- dressed in a dark grey suit, white shirt and a black tie, sunglasses on despite the overcast sky and a forecast of rain for the evening -- it’s with less surprise and more exasperation that Q raises his gaze from his cooling mug of tea and ends his solitary break to greet him. 

“Bond, finally! What took you so long?” 

And it’s Bond who looks completely perplexed; his sunglasses dropping from lax fingers as he takes them off and looks him over. 

“Q? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“No? And you shouldn’t call me that. Especially not here. I’ve told you.”

That is of course the moment when his counterpart inevitably also shows up, because he just can’t catch a break.

“Shaw, your break’s up! I don’t have all day and your bloody encryptions are a total mess, you better come down and make some sense of this bullshit before M gets back! You know what he’s like when his neck’s on the line!” It’s an angry mutter, barely audible from the huffing and panting of the man’s hurried effort to climb the stairs up from the basement labs, but he hears it all the same. “Hope they lock you up for good.”

Something inside of him breaks then, the thin cover of civility towards his replacement giving way to pure malice. He’s not proud of himself, for being such a prick, but what has he got to lose?

He takes a couple of steps forward, adjusting his glasses and staring the man down. 

“I’ve tried to show you some modicum of respect,  _ Q _ , despite your unfortunately accurate name and equally appalling lack of initiative in running this branch. Now, I’d very much like you to pay me the same courtesy and kindly  _ fuck off _ , because I have more important matters to deal with than instructing your sorry ass on the basics of cryptanalysis.”

Sharon, one of his former ‘minions’, passes them on her way to the cafeteria and gives him a worried, wide-eyed look. “What?” he asks her loudly enough for anyone within earshot to hear clearly, “just so you know,  _ I’m  _ not being the  _ Dick _ here.”

* *

Bond picks up the sunglasses and sizes up the man his Q is facing: mid-forties, a little taller and broader in shoulders, paunchy but not overly fat, still clearly out of shape and unused to physical altercations. If it came down to a Q vs Q death match, he’d place his bets firmly on his former quartermaster. He almost voices a wish to see it. 

Instead, he stalks up to the man, invading his personal space, and whispers to him: “McPhail, is it? Well, nomen est omen. If I were you, I’d do as he says. Wouldn’t want to find out what damage he’d inflict upon you for interrupting his tea break.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he growls, and shoves at Bond. 

“Enough!”

Tanner marches down to the lobby, face red with agitation. “Bond, why the hell didn’t you call! Up to my office, now! You too, Shaw!” 

He grabs McPhail by the sleeve as he walks by and continues, pulling him along, “I need a list of what you’ve got so far; dates, locations, identities, database matches. Especially those. Find me the connections. You know what’s at stake. We need  _ something _ tangible for the ISC meeting by five. This is no time for petty rivalries.”

As Tanner escorts McPhail back to Q Branch, Bond follows Q up the stairs to Tanner’s room. There’s no way he’s going to refer to them any differently although he very well knows that calling the current quartermaster by his name is rude if not explicitly forbidden anymore. He takes two steps at a time to catch up, and side-eyes Q.

“Whatever happened to your boyfriend?” He asks, peevish, “where’s Blake?”

Q almost trips on the next step. 

“What--” he says with a bitter laugh, trying to regain his balance, “--the hell are you talking about?”

“You heard me, you have a hell of a lot of explaining to do.”

“No, Bond, you’re six days late for _ that _ . But you are also dead wrong.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Bond doesn’t have the time to ask any more questions before Tanner shows up and it’s his turn to answer. He gives as accurate a retelling as possible of his and 007’s escape from Point Nemo and his exploits since then. He’s actually surprised to hear that the massive ship did not completely sink. It’s further proof of the genius behind it’s design, but also gives the Americans an opportunity to find possibly incriminating evidence against Q if his suspicions are to be trusted. He doesn’t understand at all why Q had  _ not _ vanished when he had the chance if that is the case. 

Q hasn’t said anything the whole time, listening to Bond’s version of the tale with an unreadable expression. A shadow passes over his usually open features when he mentions the gunned-down fighters, and what he’d learned from the rescued pilot. He waits until Bond is done, and then, finally, speaks up. 

“I told you you were wrong, but I didn’t even realise how completely far off the mark,” he enunciates very clearly, looking him straight in the eye. “That you would even _ think  _ I would have done that, willingly kill unsuspecting allies, and just... disappear?” He shakes his head sadly, “ _ Why? _ ”

None of it still makes any sense to Bond, but it’s all starting to feel like a big mistake on his part. A nightmare he wants to wake up from before it really starts to make sense, because he’s damn sure he’s not going to like it when he finally pieces it together. 

Tanner keeps typing up his report - they don’t even trust him to fill in those forms by himself anymore, it seems - and Q studies him quietly, until he decides to put him out of his misery of ignorance. 

“If you didn’t figure it out yet, he turned on me. Put a gun to my head, bashed in all of my tech and tied me to a seat for 8 hours. Then he got rid of our escort and took the plane to you-know-where and threw me out. I managed to call Moneypenny and she helped me get home. That’s my heroic side of the whole ordeal. Happy now?”   
  
Tanner has ceased his typing and they’re both staring at Bond, and suddenly he feels exposed for the fool he’s been, again, being led by instinct and emotion rather than a spy’s logic. 

“...Fuck. I’m sorry.” That’s really all he can think to say, because he’s also angry; at himself, at Blake, even at Q for putting himself into that kind of danger, and all of that anger is nothing but impotent rage building inside of him without an outlet or a target. 

Q and Tanner start to discuss the next day’s plans and Tanner announces he’s going to have a chat with M and prepare him for the ISC meeting tomorrow. Q also asks for an audience, but he refuses to do it over a video meeting; he wants M to be present and needs access to his personal servers the Q Branch people have retrieved from his apartment. It will have to wait until tomorrow. Personally, Bond can very well wait to be face to face with M; he has a fairly good idea of the shade of livid his face is going to turn at seeing Bond, despite his coming back after only six days of being AWOL this time. Let Tanner deliver the news and bear the first brunt of it.

Q heads down to Q Branch to fetch his stuff before going… wherever he’s going, and Bond wanders slowly back to the lobby. He goes to the cafeteria and asks for a regular coffee, black, no sugar. He wants it to taste bitter, like it always does here at this hour of the day after most of the regulars have gone. It’s still hot though, and he revels in the sensation of holding the paper cup between his hands. He migrates to a window seat and stares out into the late afternoon; clouds hanging low in a promise of rain, wind picking up, tearing the few remaining yellowed leaves off the trees. 

The last dregs of coffee have gone cold in his cup by the time Q appears at his elbow. 

“Why are you still here?” He asks. It’s a good question. 

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have a place to go?”

“I’ll find something.”

“Well,” Q seems to hesitate for a moment, “I’m at a safehouse for now, I’m sure it would be okay if… if you wanted to share.”

That is certainly unexpected, Bond thinks, but it’s not an offer he would refuse. It’s an offer of reconciliation, maybe even a rekindled friendship in his mind, rather than just a place to crash. 

He nods his consent, “If it’s not a bother.”

Q smiles, a small lopsided turn of the lips, but it’s still a smile. “You’ll be a nuisance as always, but I can manage.”

There’s a car and a driver waiting for Q as they make their way outside, and Bond recognises the place as soon as they arrive. He’s been here before, as a security detail for a foreign informant, years ago. He’s surprised the same flat is still being used. It’s in an expensive neighborhood, not very far from where he used to live. Maybe that’s why Six has kept it. Of course, the tight security is not out place here, and to a casual observer, the company car dropping someone off would neatly slip under the radar. 

It’s a second floor apartment in a modern, four-story building; a large living room, spacious kitchen and two bedrooms enough for a family to live in comfortably if needed. It’s sparsely furnished, however, and not luxurious in ways that Bond has come to expect from the better hotels on his travels. Clearly, it’s not meant for comfort or extended stay. 

Q drops his bag on the sofa and puts a tea kettle on in the kitchen, leaving him to take a look around. He doesn’t have much with him; just the bare necessities in a suitcase. Since leaving Jamaica, he realises, that’s essentially the total sum of his possessions. He’s not going back there ever again. The DB5 is as good as gone and he’d sold his London flat years ago after deciding to permanently stay in Jamaica. 

He’s always been a drifter, but there’s been a home base to return to. Not anymore. He should do something about that, but it’s not the time. 

Tomorrow he will make his last statements as an intelligence operative in front of M, Tanner and the ISC representative. He really hopes it will be enough to solidify the legality of their actions and let MI6 continue with unravelling Safin’s web. A few bruised egos among the self-important MP’s weighs nothing in comparison. In his opinion, this is how anti-terrorism intelligence  _ should _ work: quietly gather data and strike hard enough before anything happens on a large enough scale to draw a lot of international and political attention to it or cause the loss of civilian lives. Less bureaucracy, more direct action. The longer you waste time discussing the next move in cabinets, the more chance you give the terrorist to resort to plan B. The threat is never singular and rarely dependent on only one man. Chaos can be brought about in so many ways. And it had been  _ so close _ . If not for Q. 

But the rest of it is someone else’s problem to take care of. Q, hopefully, will be a part of it. For Bond, this is the end. His story is finished, the credits have rolled by tomorrow night, but by some mistake of the higher power he’s still standing here. No sunset to ride into; certainly not a happy ending in sight. 007 will not return in the next episode. 

Oh, except... He certainly hopes the  _ new _ 007 will return. Although from what he’s heard, her chances to return to active duty don’t look that favourable. There may still be a certain magic to that number, however, he’s proof enough himself. He hopes it holds true at least once more.

“Do you want something to eat?” Q interrupts his musings in the midst of building a state-of-the-art sandwich, and maybe it’s for the best. 

“If you don’t mind”, he says again. He doesn't want to be a bother, and Q gives nothing away regarding how he feels about their situation. 

He sits at the kitchen table while Q works, trying to gather his errant thoughts. He came here for one reason, and that is what he needs to do, regardless of anything else. He’s been granted a chance after five years,and he’s not going to be stupid about it. 

“Q,” he begins, and by the venomous side-eye he receives, it’s pretty clear it’s still all going to hell.

“Fine! What is Ben short for, really? He knew your  _ real _ name, didn’t he? Never called you Shaw. If you’re not going to let me call you Q, I think at least I deserve the same courtesy as your backstabbing lover.”

Q slams the plate with a huge sandwich down on the table in front of him, and sits down with his own. 

“I don’t know what gave you that hare-brained idea, but Blake was not my boyfriend. Neither of us had any choice by the time we left Intelscape. I forced him to go with me, when he interrupted my preparations. He complied, because it was in his best interests. He turned on me because he has a girlfriend back in Dubai and he felt he needed to return, more than he needed to save his own skin and turn himself in. You were completely wrong from the beginning, like I tried to tell you.”

“I saw the tapes of your landing in San Pedro,” Bond says, desperately trying to grasp the meaning. “He had his arm around your back. You were practically plastered to his side. Don’t tell me it was just to stop you from keeling over in exhaustion!”

“He had a gun pressed into my back, you bloody idiot! What was I supposed to do, run?”

Bond blinks, and suddenly it’s all clear in his head. Their postures, the stumbling...There’s no curse potent enough in any of the languages he knows to describe the feeling. His own mind’s been playing tricks on him again and it always comes back to bite him in the arse. 

“Fuck, I’m sorry. Again.” he exhales more than says aloud, and Q smirks. 

“Yeah, I know. And I guess you can go on calling me Q, just don’t do it back at Six for a while. I do intend to win back that position. There’s something shifty about McPhail and I think Moneypenny knows, at least. She doesn’t like him. I’m going to find what it is and smoke him out, just watch me.”

“I like that plan,” he says, and he really does. He’d known the current quartermaster for all of five minutes, and the man deserved to be hung by the balls in his opinion. “But I’m afraid I won’t be here to see it.”

That gives Q a pause from munching his sandwich and he looks up at Bond, suddenly looking.. worried?

“You’re leaving?”

Bond sighs and shrugs. “What do you do with old and broken operatives when they’re no longer good for service and unfit for peaceful retirement?”

“There are so many options! M could--”

“I’m not taking a desk job, you know that. I don’t have patience with the trainees….”

“Still, I could even arrange something. In my--”

“Q, no. Listen. You have to give me time to process this. I didn’t expect to come back. ”

“Back to Six? If we play this right tomorrow, you’ll have all the time you need.”

“Back from the mission.”

“James.” 

That’s the first time he remembers ever hearing that name from Q, and it startles him. Yes, he’s being morbid again. Yes, he knows everybody hates that, himself included. Sue me, he thinks, that’s what becomes of men like me at the end.

“I came here mostly to talk with you,” he confesses. “To apologise, now that I have the chance. Mansfield told me once that having regrets is unprofessional. I find it unbearable even when you’re out of the profession.”

“I told you, there’s nothing to apologize for.” Q takes his empty plate to the sink and starts to rinse it off. Bond has trouble finishing his, but he shoves the last bits into his mouth and follows Q. He takes both of the plates and quickly washes them and sets them to dry. 

“What if I want to,” he asks, and ushers Q back to sit at the table. “I don’t want to leave things unsaid between us.”

Q has an almost panicked look about him, fists clenched and spine rigid, poised for flight. But he stays and listens, and Bond is thankful for that.

“If I could go back in time, back to the bridge, with Blofeld at my feet, I would shoot him.”

Q’s eyes go wide and he just barely holds in what he’s about to say, clearly surprised. 

“I was so sick of myself, of who I was, who the service had made me. You have no idea. I wanted out, I wanted to be someone else. But I could never have done it by myself.”

“So you went with Madeleine. I kind of figured it was something like that,” Q says quietly. “I don’t begrudge you for that choice.” 

“I do,” he declares, “Every day. I want you to know that I see now what I threw away. You were the only person who ever…” he’s having a bit of trouble getting the words out, but he needs to say this, even if it’s tearing him open and exposing the ugly black mess he is, deep down in his very core. “...who cared for me without some ulterior motive.”

“I don’t think that’s true, there are still people who care about you, you know. You’re not as alone as you think.” Q’s not looking at him though, he’s nervous and avoiding eye contact, and that’s not at all the reaction he’d been hoping for. 

“They’re not like you.” There’s a pregnant pause, and as Q doesn’t speak, he continues. “I know, because I used that, I used your dedication to my own ends, and  _ you knew it _ . Still you always… Shit, I remember how you looked at me when I came for the DB5.”

Q stands up abruptly. “Please don’t remind me. That was… not a good time period in my life and I’m glad it’s long past.” He heads out of the kitchen and retreats to his bedroom, looking for his laptop charger on the way. “Thank you for being honest, though. I appreciate it. Now, there are still some things I need to prepare for tomorrow, so I would appreciate some peace and quiet...”

He knows that’s it, that’s all he’s going to get from Q at this point, and even though it feels like some of the weight has left his shoulders, he still feels hollow inside. Something is not settled, and he feels restless, unable to think of anything else. 

He lingers in the living room, sitting on the sofa and listening to the quiet clacking of keys as Q works. Or whatever he’s doing. It’s debatable whether it could be called work in their current situation. But Bond knows they share this: espionage has never been just a job for either of them. 

“Aren’t you going to sleep at all?” He asks when the time is nearing midnight, and the faint sound still carries over to him.

“I’ll have to, eventually, won’t I?” Q answers tiredly, but the click-clack finally stops, and he closes the door to change. Bond goes to the next bedroom and flings his single suitcase on the bed, opening it and searching through the meager contents. A fresh pair of briefs will do to sleep in, but he'd like a shower and he doesn’t even have a towel. He hopes the safehouse is properly stocked for two in that regard, despite only originally housing Q. 

He hears the shower running, and waits until after Q is done, then makes his way to the bathroom to investigate. He’s in luck. He uses the same shampoo and soap, and a thought occurs to him that it’s strangely intimate, like sharing something private, despite the fact that the bottle’s a generic brand and probably stocked by the company. 

He retreats to his room quietly and finally buries himself into the soft mattress and pillows, under a heavy blanket. The feeling is heavenly for his tired and abused body. At least the people responsible for the unimpressive decoration had got one thing right. 

He’s just drifting into the dreamlands, when a voice carries over from the next room through his open door. 

“James? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. Fire away.” He’s tired, but it’s not like he could refuse. 

“How come you never contacted me? If you felt like we needed to talk?”

He doesn’t really have an answer to that. It wasn’t a sudden realisation, but rather something that had crept up on him, the slow understanding as he had thought back to his various life choices during his time in MI6 and after. Seeing how even Madeleine had had enough, been done with their relationship, yet both of them still clinging to a wishful dream. Until the truth had slapped him in the face. But even more than that, it must have been because he knew he’d hurt and offended Q, and if Q had wanted to keep in touch, he could have done so at any time he’d wanted. The silence was, even more than Madeleine’s wishes, what confirmed his decision to stay away from anything related to his former life. 

“I’m not good at explaining myself,” he just says. “Thought that you wouldn’t want me to. You never… I thought you might call when I was in London to sell the flat.”

“Oh, the Smart Blood... It stopped working, about a year in. It was still in its developmental phase after all. Pity.”

Q falls silent for a while, and Bond stares into the darkness. 

“You could have been dead for all I knew. Those chips were kinetically charged by your bloodstream. They should have been active for as long as you live.”

“Are you admitting to creating faulty tech? Must be a first.”

“Ha! It must be in your DNA to destroy every gadget I ever created, even the microscopic ones.”

“Q? Just so you know. I believed you dead for a while, too. I would have ripped him to pieces. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Yeah, well. Good night.”

“...Night.”

He drifts off with one less puzzle piece missing, but still, Bond feels like he’s looking for something he doesn’t even know he’s lost. 


	15. Chapter 15

Q wakes up in the morning with a feeling of urgency that makes him jump out of bed before he’s got his eyes fully open. It’s an important day, but most of all, it might be the last day he’ll spend in Bond’s company, if he really intends to leave again when he’s not urgently needed. 

It’s an old, familiar warmth inside of him, but rekindled into an acute, irritating ache. He’d almost become friends with that feeling, reminded by it every now and then that he’s still human and hasn’t yet turned into one of his intelligent machines. 

It’s not Bond’s fault, the way he feels. Although Q hasn’t been ashamed of acknowledging his doomed crush for years -- Psych sessions can be helpful with some things, despite them having slapped him with a diagnosis and a prescription almost the second he’d walked in -- he is right now a little bit flustered by the gracious apology he’d received for the whole ordeal. It’s not something he’d ever expected. Where Bond is concerned, he’s never expected anything at all. He’s always known better. 

It’s still somewhat hard to accept that he will never be completely over Bond. Not in a way that he could remain unaffected by the man’s presence or the wonderfully unpredictable shit he pulls. 

The way that Bond had been last night. Apologetic. Completely open and honest. It twisted the knife somewhere deep inside and made him wish for foolish things. It would be more than enough to be able to regain some of what they had shared before. When they had worked together, and what he had just briefly got a taste of again after years apart.

To think that he would lose it again, after all this. It’s not the relief he only half-heartedly wants it to be. It’s nothing but another personal loss looming ahead. If he doesn’t do something. 

Bond sits at the kitchen table, already fully dressed and drinking coffee. There's a pot of steaming tea on his side, waiting. And an assortment of fruits, toast, eggs, cheese…

He’d thought he was up early. And there he’s standing like a fool at a loss of words, in a too big t-shirt and track pants, hair a mess, blurry-eyed without his glasses. If the clock on the wall doesn’t lie, he hasn’t overslept. On the contrary, it’s still half an hour to the wake-up time they had agreed on in the evening. 

Bond gets up to pour him the tea and murmurs, “You look adorable when you’re still half asleep.”

It’s purely on instinct as Q acts, throwing his arms around Bond and hiding his face into the crook of his neck. James falters, but regains his balance fast enough to stop them both from tumbling over and spilling the hot Earl Grey on them both. 

“What are you doing?”, he asks, and Q tries to stifle a slightly hysterical laugh. 

“Fixing things,” he manages, “I was always good at fixing what you broke.”

Bond goes very still for a moment, and Q imagines he can hear both of their heartbeats echoing in the silence. 

“If I’m wrong, shoot me dead right now,” he chokes out without daring to look up.

There’s a slight tightening of the embrace, and Q’s not sure which one of them initiates it, but then Bond pulls back, serious, and his words sceptical. “You’d still have me? I thought you were glad that was left in the past.”

“I reconsidered,” he says, feeling suddenly cold without the intense physical contact. “I don’t want you to leave. I don’t need us to be anything, I just thought… it would be nice to work with you again and--”

“Q. Stop talking.” Bond is on him like a whirlwind, kissing him, filling his senses and scattering his thoughts. Time flies right out of the window. He finds himself backed against a wall, out of breath and aroused. It’s perfect, and torturous, and overwhelming. He knows where this is going, and the realisation jolts him back to the present.

“Wait, wait. We need to… I have to change, and eat something before we go. There are things I need to prepare for the-- I need my wits about me.”

“I know, I know. Sorry. Got a little carried away. Let’s get ready.” 

Bond lets him go, fixing up his tousled appearance all the while grinning like a Cheshire Cat, and it ignites Q’s blood like nothing else. _ This _ is it, the missing something that has left him hollow inside for the past years. He sees the echo of it in Bond, in the cocksure swagger and poised readiness he’s come to associate with the agent on a mission. 

* *

Q feels vaguely proud of himself for regaining his composure and professionalism by the time they have been dropped off at Whitehall. Tanner leads them to M’s office, and the spacious hallway outside is already packed with people: MP’s, agents, administrative staff. No journalists hanging around yet, thank heavens. News usually travels fast despite their efforts. It’s still an hour until they are due to start the meeting at the auditorium. It’s an informal hearing, for now, but they all understand what’s at stake: the ISC is there precisely to supervise, coordinate and report the work of Britain’s intelligence organisations to the parliament, and any major operations are always carried out under the authorisation of both. Having an unsanctioned mission blow up literally in their faces, even if the main objective had been achieved would mean legal actions and severe consequences to everyone involved, but most of all, M.

The atmosphere is tense, all conversations kept to a minimum, and the closer to 11a.m. it gets, the more restless Tanner becomes. 

He approaches Q and whispers to him in passing, “Have you heard from Moneypenny?”

“Not since yesterday,” he says, and frowns at Tanner’s obvious distress. Tanner goes on, gathering his resources, and Bond voices the question that’s on the forefront of Q’s mind:

“Shouldn’t they be here by now?”

“I saw Johnson outside. And the Defence Secretary. Lawson. Tall, thin guy must have been him. M always hated his guts, they fought over funding… prioritising operations… I looked into it a couple years ago because my projects all seemed to run into a brick wall. It doesn’t bode well, those two teaming up.”

“Raymond Lawson. I know him alright,” Bond says. “I think Mallory’s wife had an affair with him at some point. If you believe the rumour mill…”

“Oh, that would explain the--”

Tanner interrupts their hushed conversation, breezing through the room in a full-blown alarm mode. 

“M is missing. I can’t reach him, or Moneypenny. Her phone is dead. His goes to the voicemail. Margetts, clear this place, get everyone out who’s not Six! The meeting is postponed!” Tanner shouts to his assistant, simultaneously gathering papers and typing messages. “And call in McPh-- Q and R and all the Double-O agents available. This is urgent.”   
  
Q watches them efficiently carry out Tanner’s orders. Margetts had been new to the position when he had left Six two years ago, fresh out of Uni, and he clearly remembers them facing some prejudiced attitudes but Tanner had steadfastly kept to his decision. It seems to have been a good one. More than that, Q’s impressed by Tanner’s instinctive grasp of the leadership needed in the absence of both M and the practical extension of his authority, Moneypenny. 

He looks to Bond, standing beside him, and they exchange a look of wordless approval. Something is going to go down today, and they will both stand with Tanner whatever happens.

* *

Tanner’s gaze has just settled on Bond, as it dawns to him that technically neither himself nor Q are MI6 anymore.    
  
“Bill?” Bond inquires, “That didn’t mean us, did it? I’m sure you wouldn’t discard your best men on a mere technicality…”

“Sit down, Bond, and listen. I don’t have the time for your antics, but I don’t have enough agents either, so you’re in. Shaw, naturally. Just a moment.”

“Get me full access to our system, please,” Q says immediately, all business. “We’ll start with the CCTV. Where’s... Q?”

“Indeed.” Tanner tears his focus away from his laptop. “Margetts?”

“Nowhere to be found, sir! I can’t seem to reach him on the phone, either!”

“This is starting to look promising,” Bond growls, “I’m getting to beat the living daylights out of him after all.”

Q and R are already on it, sitting shoulder to shoulder in front of a screen, heads bent down and eyes trained on the security footage from the morning. 

“Wait, that was Q, wasn’t it?” R says, and they rewind and rewatch something a few times over.  _ Q _ changes the feed into one with a better view, and finds the matching time stamp. 06:49 a.m., today. “He’s there alright”, Q confirms, and Bond and Tanner are also drawn closer to watch. McPhail walks into the car park reserved for MI6 personnel, heading towards a light grey BMW just arriving there. He gets in, and the car idles there for a couple of minutes. Then two other figures approach it, both dressed in dark suits. Bond recognises them instantly as field agents by their habitus, and only a small shift in their position towards the camera gives away their identities.

“That’s Harding and Singh from MI5!” 

“Do they have a reason to be here? With him?” Q asks Tanner, and he shakes his head. 

“Not that I know of. But McPhail keeps his own counsel on many things, I wouldn't necessarily know. Those two were Denbigh’s buddies. I have a bad feeling about this. I had a bad feeling about him from the beginning, and so did M, but that’s a discussion for another time.”

They get in the backseat, and the car drives off. Q brings up an interactive roadmap app and searches for the license plate. They spot the car once, in a traffic cam on the M40 north-west from London. However, they’d had four hours to disappear, and it’s obvious they could be anywhere by now. 

Q doesn’t stop to swear or wonder what to do. Bond isn’t entirely sure what he’s doing, but watching him work is fascinating. He’d rarely witnessed it in person even in the times before. 

“You won’t believe this,” Q says suddenly, “He’s got his cell phone with him, and even the gps is on. I’ve got their exact location.”

“Even he’s not that stupid, it’s a trap,” Bond says, and R agrees. 

“You’re right, even if he’s… willfully ignorant in a few areas of our expertise.”

Tanner’s phone rings for the third time within a minute, and he can’t ignore it any longer. 

Bond watches him freeze as the caller tells his news. The call is brief, and Tanner disconnects without wasting time on a goodbye. 

“There’s been a security breach in Wakefield Prison. A whole block has been compromised. Several inmates are missing. You know who among them.”

“Blofeld,” he grinds out, and it comes out precisely as murderous as he’s feeling. 

He really should have shot the man when he had the chance. 

“I’m going after him,” Bond says, acting on his first instinct. “The sooner we pick up the trail the better. If we let him go into hiding, he’ll have time to prepare one of his insane plots again.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Bond,” Tanner says, “as long as we don’t know where he’s headed and who are with him, we’d be going in blind. I don’t think that’s such a good idea. If Blofeld’s involved in the disappearance of M and Moneypenny…”

“It can’t be a coincidence.” Bond is absolutely sure of that. He remembers the gleam in Blofeld’s eyes when he’d agreed to give them information on Safin’s movements, and the puzzle piece clicks. “He’s been planning this since we went after Safin. Maybe even before. The bastard orchestrated all that for a distraction. Something to force the eyes away from himself and draw our anti-terrorist resources elsewhere when he would attempt his break. We should have anticipated it.”

“The location.” Q demands their attention back on track. “A65, moving north-west from Leeds. About ten, fifteen miles out. Any ideas about destination?”

“It’s close enough to Wakefield, wherever they are headed I’m willing to bet we’ll also find Blofeld there. Looks like he’s not trying to hide after all, at least not from us. Should we follow?” Bond asks, adrenaline spiking in his blood, demanding action. 

“There’s nothing much there,” Tanner says, looking at the satellite map on the screen. “Rural villages on the moors. They’ve passed the town of Guiseley.” They watch the dot of McPhail’s phone travel further north and take a couple of turns to smaller roads through the farmlands.

There’s a knock on the door of Tanner’s office, and Margetts lets in 002 and 009. 

“Gentlemen! Glad to see you.” Bond greets his old colleagues, both of them shaking his hand and offering a warm smile. “Looks like we have a job to do on home soil.”

“Hold on,” Q raises his hand and directs them all to look at the screen. “Looks like they’re parking there. Behind that… Farm House? Manor?” He zooms in on the satellite image and it sharpens into an aerial shot of a large, derelict building. It looks Victorian in shape, or early 20th century, Bond isn’t an expert in historical architecture, but it brings to mind a scene from a gothic horror movie. 

“Look at the size of that thing. There’s a  _ bell tower _ on the main building. Are those terraced houses all part of it?”

“Oh wow, guess what it is?” R hauls another laptop next to Q’s, and shows them her search results. “St. James Private Asylum, built in 1897 to help alleviate the overcrowding of the Wakefield and Wadsley facilities. Since 1952 known as St. James Hospital for the mentally ill. It was closed in 1978, and the property was sold to be converted to residential purposes. It was partially renovated, but the buyers never finished the project. It changed hands twice after that, the current owner is listed as the Masterson & Hardy Foundation. Current status is closed to the public and condition unknown.”

“Run a search on the owners, see if there’s something useful,” Tanner says, and motions for the agents to follow as he gives R space to work. 

“Alright, gentlemen. We are going in with all available resources. You three will work together, assemble a team of field agents, backed up by the local police. Bond, I’m leaving it for you to organise on site. Plan a tactical approach and keep to it. Myself, R and Shaw will be your contacts at HQ. MI5 or the rest of Q-Branch will  _ not _ be involved at this point, understood?”

“I have the floor plan and a complete map of the surrounding terrain and buildings on and around the property, I can be of help to Bond,” Q says and follows them, leaving R to her research. “And besides, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve for my agents. Follow me.” 

Yes, it does almost feel like the good old times. Bond follows after Q and the Double-O’s with a spring in his step.


	16. Chapter 16

Eve blinks at the sudden brightness as the black pillow case is pulled from her head. She feels slightly nauseous from the long car ride with her eyes covered. 

She finds herself eye to eye with Blofeld. 

And Raymond Lawson, Defence Secretary. That’s when her blood really runs cold.

She casts a frantinc look about the plain room as she’s being dragged towards a padded bench, not unlike those she’d seen used by physiotherapists or masseuses, but equipped with leather straps. The thing is clearly decades old, the leather starting to crack around the edges. There’s nothing to be used as a weapon in the otherwise empty room, and Agent Singh is being unnecessarily rough with her, already causing bruises to blossom along her arms.

“Sit down on the bench, Miss Moneypenny,” Blofeld commands. “In case you were wondering… yes, this is a hostage situation.”

She doesn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer. She’d known the moment the call had come from the Defence Secretary’s Office, requesting M there STAT, that something was off. They were practically sworn enemies. There was nothing concerning the meeting they would have had reason to discuss together before the actual battle of wills. She knew Lawson would have done anything in his power to remove Mallory from his position - and likely the same was true the other way around. 

But they hadn’t anticipated being surrounded and taken into custody by MI5 agents, stripped of their phones and the weapon she’d been carrying, just in case. 

No one had batted an eye as Mallory and Moneypenny had been escorted out of the building with six agents flanking them. Once they were out in the empty backyard, Gareth had made his move. She’d tried to assist, but she’d been quickly subdued by stronger male agents. He’d been beaten unconscious before they were shoved into his specially equipped Mercedes and driven off. She knew she recognised the driver but couldn’t immediately recall the name. Now it came back to her.  _ Finley _ . That little bastard from the RAF R&D team that Q had hated for a very good reason. 

Seeing Blofeld in all his deranged glory standing before her, it all started to make a horrifying kind of sense. 

“I won’t talk,” she said as she was pushed back onto the bench and strapped to it by her wrists and ankles.

“I don’t expect you to,” Blofeld smirked, “you’re here simply for the sake of convenience. I’m sure you are familiar with the history of establishments such as this. Women were admitted to lunatic asylums for various reasons that had nothing to do with a mental illness. Did you know it was a common practise to dispose of women who were too outspoken, meddling in men’s affairs, pursuing illicit relationships… or simply inconveniently in the way of a man looking to increase his wealth and status? Those poor souls spent their days locked in the isolation ward among the truly, incurably insane, being treated to neurosurgery or shock therapy to calm their tempers, and never saw the light of day again. It was considered a mercy when their memory and higher brain functions eventually suffered enough to let them live in a sedate, undisturbed state of existence.”

The door opens, and in the corner of her eye, she sees that Mallory is brought in, walking slowly but on his own two feet between a couple more agents and four men in rather mix’n’match guerilla style combat gear. She recognises one of them as Tim Smithson, a convicted career criminal who had attempted a prisonbreak from Wakefield two years ago. He’s carrying with him a heavy, wooden box.

“Fortunately, Miss Moneypenny, you won’t be spending the rest of your life here locked in a padded room. We don’t have the time for such… theatrics. For you, it will be over quite soon, one way or another.”

She strains to see to the other side of the large room from her reclining position and finds Mallory seated behind the ancient doctor’s desk, hands cuffed behind the chair. McPhail, that despicable traitorous idiot is handling a laptop, facing him. Harding and Singh both stand there behind him, guns trained at his head. 

Smithson opens his crate and drags out a heavy, outdated device with a few knobs and buttons. She shudders as the man smiles a sleazy, sadistic smile and presses a pair of electrodes to her temples. 

“Now, I’m no expert with this kind of thing, Missy, but I’m sure you know what this apparatus is. If you lie very still, maybe it won’t hurt so much. Or maybe it will, I don’t know.”

“Alright, Mallory,” Lawson says from across the room in his booming voice, “I don’t have the patience for games. I’m here for one reason only and you know what it is. You’re already finished, time to leave your legacy in more capable hands. Open that laptop and do what I tell you. The only way you’ll walk away from here alive is together with us.”

“Don’t give them anything, whatever they do,” Eve demands, the realisation that this is not the first time Gareth’s faced this kind of interrogation adding to her horror. She trusts he wouldn’t give in for anything they subjected him to, but she hopes like hell that he’ll have the brass balls to hear her scream. 

* *

Mallory actually laughs at that. He doesn’t say anything. There’s no need. He’s been through this, lost a man like this. They won’t spare Eve for his compliance. 

“Tick tock,” Blofeld taunts. “You can blame only yourself for your predicament.”

“What do you want, then?” He stalls for time. 

McPhail opens the laptop for him and powers it on. It’s the exact view that greets him every morning on his own Six issued work laptop. “We all want different things,  _ M;  _ turns out you are the means to all of them, _ ”  _ he sneers. “Mine is easy. Just access. I wouldn’t have to make you, if you hadn’t restricted my rights. Now it’s going to be you, betraying your own organisation.”

“You don’t have long to consider,” Blofeld continues, “no doubt my dear brother will be knocking on the door of this charming facility soon enough. That’s our cue to leave. You’re my ticket to a safe passage out of the country. James and Miss Moneypenny on the other hand will keep your people entertained, finding themselves in a nasty little escape room. They’ll have one hour. Every door he opens on the way will give her a jolt from the ECT machine, increasing in voltage until the last one will fry her brain and kill her. If she manages to get herself free, and leaves through the unlocked back door of this room, James dies. If the time runs out, they both die. We’ll have the pleasure of monitoring online which one of them will prevail,” He laughs, “Care to place a bet?”

He ignores Blofeld and calms himself down as much as possible, directing his words at Eve. 

“We are both trained for this. You are fools if you think we are playing along.”

“I don’t really care,” Blofeld throws at him, “you gave me a perfect opportunity with the whole Safin fiasco; you practically sank your own ship with his, you must realise that. I have a solution for that, but it won’t come without a price. You may have taken SPECTRE from me, now I am taking MI6 from you, one way or another, and there is nothing you can do to stop me. Play along or not, the information you hold is extremely hot currency. We’ll get it out of you, never doubt that. Your pretty little girlfriend on the other hand, she’s fully expendable. But James will undoubtedly toss his life away trying to heroically save her, we all know he’s stupid like that. I hear they have a history too, did you know that?” Blofeld taunts him, giving him a moment to consider. “Cooperate now, and I might consider sparing her life.”

He won’t rise to the bait. They must have been closely watched lately for Blofeld to have arrived at the conclusion that there’s something between him and Moneypenny that would give him that kind of leverage. Someone must have seen her leave his house that one morning. Other than that, he refuses to believe he could have been so transparent at work. Eve, certainly not. 

McPhail disappears out of the door and comes back a minute later with a bunch of wires and a timer display. He connects them to the archaic machine and another laptop. Then he positions the timer on the table next to it, facing Eve. He plays with his mobile phone for a moment, the timer sets to 01:00 and the seconds start ticking. 

“Time’s up, Mallory, don’t think for a moment that you’ve won,” Lawson spits, and Harding yanks him up from the chair roughly, re-cuffing his hands behind his back and pushing him out of the door ahead of them. 

He’s taken through long corridors of the women’s ward lined by closed doors, paint peeling off their surface and the old, Victorian era stonework clashing with time-worn 70’s interior design. The dining hall is high-ceilinged and its arched doorways are decorated with fresco-like paintings; an empty space long ago cleared of outdated furniture. The kitchen retains equipment from the seventies, similar in their disused eeriness to the ominous ECT machine. He imagines Bond storming through these spaces in search of them, looking for any clue how to proceed. So many doors. 

They exit through the kitchen backdoor, crossing the courtyard and out of heavy iron gates. It’s a large property, impossible to effectively surround, Mallory notes as he’s ushered on. Rows of brick houses surrounded by a long stretch of high iron fence form an actual secluded village around the large main building. There’s an asphalt-covered clearing in the middle, painted parking spots still visible and barely legible road signs directing to different wards: a testament of repurposing efforts more than forty years ago. 

In the middle of it, there is a military class helicopter waiting. Mallory recognises it as the type recently replaced by the Ministry of Defence. They are probably attempting to fly over the Canal to the Continent. 

* *

“Tactical Command to HQ, do you copy?”

“ _ Perfectly, Commander Bond. Q signing in as your contact, Chief of Staff supervising. Report. _ ”

“We’re in location. Police road blocks in place on all four exits about half a mile out. Double-O-Two moving in through the front alone. He will engage for negotiation if possible. Blofeld had an agenda of some kind, best find out what it is before taking direct action. No sign of activity outside of the main building. Assets presumably held captive, exact location unknown. Double-O-Nine doing a perimeter check with his CTSFO team, he will position them accordingly… It’s a large area to cover. Preparing to back up Double-O-Two when he gives the signal.”

“ _ Where are you situated? _ ”

“Up the hill, north-west. I have a visual on the whole property. South-east side partially obscured by trees.”

“ _ Double-O-Nine to TC _ ,” another channel comes to life in his ear. “ _ Team in position. We’ve located three cars, one of which is M’s Q-Branch Mercedes, and a helicopter prepared for take-off. They are in the parking space between east wing and the staff housing _ .”

“Excellent. You know what to do. Stay in cover.”

“ _ Double-O-Two to TC. I’m in. Front door’s been left open, practically an invitation. The foyer is empty, a stack of papers on the desk. Three locked doors, stairs to both wards on the second floor. Windows barred, intact. Q, any insight? _ ”

“ _ Not as far as my equipment can tell. I don’t think they’re using electronic counter measures, it’s a low-tech temporary hideout _ .”

“It’s not a hideout,” Bond says, suddenly very sure what Blofeld is doing. “It’s a trap. For me. Blofeld’s playing his mind games again. We’re not giving him what he wants. Double-O-Two, proceed carefully. Don’t do anything I would do.”

Q laughs, and it’s a beautiful sound in his ears. 002 chuckles. They aren’t really friends, but he knows Bond well enough, his mission record as well as reputation. It’s so good to be a part of this again that he almost gets distracted for a moment.

“ _ Shit. TC, I found something in the stack of papers. It’s a numeric code for one of the combination locks, I’m sure of it. But why give it away? 183460 _ .”

“Because he’s playing a game. Establishing the rules. Try it, see what happens. Be careful, something will…”

002 fiddles with the lock.

“ _ Nothing. It doesn’t open. If I were Bond, I’d shoot it. But since we’re not doing what he expects….” _

_ “Bond. It’s your birth date.”  _ Q says in a very serious tone. _ “rearrange the numbers. April the fourth, sixty eight? _ ”

Damn, he’s right. They both were.

002 aligns the numbers and the click of the opening door carries over through the comms. 

“ _ Fuck. _ ”

“What?”

“ _ Timer _ .” 002 sounds exasperated. “ _ I didn’t see it at first, it was powered off. They’ve changed the exit sign above the door to a timer. It just came on. We’ve got an hour _ .”

“ _ It’s a bloody escape room, designed just for you,Bond, _ ” Q chuckles. 

“ _ Except we’re trying to get in, not out _ .”

“Next clue? What do you see?”

“ _ It’s the main corridor that splits in two directions. Many doors, only a few locked. Some left ajar. No apparent clues. I’ll have a look. _ ”

“Double-O-Nine, sitrep?” Bond asks. It’s been quiet on that front for quite some time.

It’s still quiet. They have a reason not to talk, then.

“Q, can you see the positions of the CTSFO team,” he asks. The parking area is just inconveniently hidden from his view even though he tries to adjust his binoculars. 

“ _ Not as such, there was movement a moment ago. Double-O-Nine’s tracker shows him inside the helicopter, I think. Probably still disabling it _ .”

Suddenly his earpiece comes back to life with a deafening screech of sound overload. 

“Ahh! Fucker, he blew it up!”

“ _ You’ve no room to talk _ ,” Q quips, “ _ I’m sure he had very good reasons. _ ”

“Double-O-Nine, sitrep!” He demands again, and this time the man answers, out of breath in a rough voice:

“ _ Prevented escape attempt on the helicopter, pilot is down, squad moving in. Only asset number one present, not secured. Repeat. Asset number one present, not secured. Squad engaging hostiles now. _ ”

“ _ Shit, that escalated fast, _ ” Q breathes. There’s a silence of a minute or two, distant gunshots carrying over signalling conflict. Bond feels the familiar quickening of his senses, the urge to get involved. But that’s not his duty today.

“ _ Asset possibly wounded; taken in his own car by targets alpha and gamma, plus one extra. They’ve gone offroad. Two more hostiles down. Target beta retreated inside. Team split for chase but holding fire. Double-O-Nine out. _ ”

“Q, I see them. CTSFOs in pursuit, shooting at the tyres now. It’s not even slowing them down. If it’s a Q-Branch car…”

“ _ It’s mine _ ,” he confirms, “ _ Did it for M before I left. Fully bulletproof, off road elevation, bunch of other interesting stuff. They need to be intercepted. Hurry up. _ ”

“You know, Q, I’m really starting to miss the good old Aston Martins. With your modifications, of course. I’ve just about had it with these family cars. Double-O-Nine, tell your men to  _ not bloody shoot _ , I’m moving in.”

“ _ Oh, come on now. You really wouldn’t want to drive a DB11 down that slope offroad. Except of course you would… and that’s why you don’t get one. _ ”

He’s already on the move, steering the purpose-built BMW X5 through the bushes and over dips and bumps with more force than necessary; calling in the closest Police squad on the go, when he sees M’s Mercedes turning around and heading uphill straight towards him.

“Q, take over Double-O-Two’s situation. Blofeld is here. He’s got M.” 

He doesn't have the time to wait for a response. The car accelerates straight towards him, playing chicken, counting on the Q Branch specialities to turn it into Blofeld’s advantage despite Bond having the higher ground. Still, it’s McPhail behind the steering wheel who swerves away first, and Harding fires at him in passing, shattering his windshield and raining tiny bits of the glass all over his lap. He feels his car rattle to a stop on flat tyres. But Blofeld’s car also slows to a halt, and the man exits in a grand gesture of nonchalance, unarmed, walking towards Bond. Harding stands up too, and drags M, bleeding, along with him, gun pressed into his temple.

“Give up, Blofeld, grand helicopter escapes just don’t work for you,” Bond says.

Blofeld laughs.

“You coward, you pathetic monkey,” he sneers at Bond, “You didn’t have the guts to shoot me then and you didn’t have it in you now to even confront me by yourself. I’m thoroughly disappointed.”

“There’s one difference between us. I learn from my mistakes; you don’t.”

“You never had any sense of fun, ever. So, let’s not play! Now you are going to call off the cops and let us through, or M’s dead. I’ll count to three.”

He doesn’t even get to one when Bond attacks. He dives at Harding, who falters in his grip on M for a fraction of a second, and it’s enough. Mallory twists himself free, and for a moment it’s a heady rush of adrenaline, blood, angry grunts and fists striking flesh and bone. A gun goes off once, and he doesn’t know who squeezed the trigger. Finally he wraps his fingers around the barrel of Harding’s gun and forces it from his grip, kneeing him in the side of the head hard enough to send him sprawling on the ground, unmoving. 

Two cars of their enforcements approach them from downhill, and members of 009’s team move out to surround them, semi-automatics trained on Blofeld.

His vision then darkens around the edges, and he feels the familiar cold creeping up his thigh. He takes a step, and the leg doesn’t want to support his weight. Well, shit, he thinks. 

He doesn’t look at Blofeld or talk to him. He’s not there on the Westminster Bridge now.

“Q, We’ve got him.”

The Mercedes in the background revs into life and tears away, rushing downhill through the bushes. 

“Do NOT send anyone into the main building,” Mallory shouts loud enough to carry over the comms and wake up Bond from his encroaching state of shock. “Do NOT open any doors in there, you hear me, Q! It’s rigged, and Moneypenny--”

“ _ Sorry sir, not right now, they’ve still got twenty minutes! I’m-- _ ”

Bond sits down on the damp ground before he embarrasses himself by falling on his face. Now the bloody leg is on fire. 

“-- _ stopping McPhail, _ ” Q says, and the landscape turns briefly white in an explosion he doesn’t register hearing at all. It’s eerily quiet for a few seconds, until sounds start filtering in through the ringing that starts from somewhere inside his head. 

Bond laughs and laughs, until tears are streaming down his dirty face and he almost can’t breathe. “You… you spiteful little shit, you just blew up your replacement  _ and _ M’s million pound Mercedes.”

But Q’s not laughing. “ _ He might have played the part of a village idiot, but that man was incredibly dangerous. The things I’ve found.. _ ”

M snatches the earpiece from him, and starts talking to Q and the other teams. He doesn’t hear it all, or comprehend, he’s not quite sure which. Something, something about the exact location, do not open the doors, Double-O-Two trying to reach Moneypenny by breaking through barred windows and walls. Bond knows there won’t be enough time. He knows the puzzle pieces are dates from his life because Blofeld is obsessed like that. He should just…...

He’s on a bloody stretcher the next time he’s aware of his surroundings, and the majestic asylum has exploded into a crumbling pile of rubble. 


	17. Chapter 17

The next morning, Q wakes up in his bed in the safehouse, roused by the ringtone of his phone on the nightstand. He’s rarely slept so well and deep lately, but he owes the solid twelve hours more to exhaustion than actual comfort and peace of mind. 

He picks it up before his mind has fully caught up with the memories of last night’s events, and Tanner’s calm voice only partially dissipates the vague, icy threat that had spread through his bloodstream at the sound of the phone ringing. 

He is required back at Six in an hour, much sooner than he’d been told to prepare for last night, and the first thought that crosses his mind is that something must have gone wrong after all. 

He has never directly, intentionally, by his own choice killed a person before. There’s a nagging voice inside of his skull telling him he’s going to pay for it. He can try to justify it. Others can tell him it was his duty and within his rights as an SIS operative on a mission. But nothing can take away the knowledge that it was also personal; a petty revenge for being practically ousted from his job. 

Instead, as he goes in ten minutes early, he runs into the PM at the front doors, takes one look at his displeased squint and windblown hair, and knows what this is about. 

He’s going to have to come up with damn good explanations for a lot of stuff… not only for blowing up M’s car and consequently McPhail, but the whole building along with McPhail’s laptop, and sending Lawson to the hospital in a coma. Q failing that would practically be the PM’s only current hope of ridding himself of Mallory and perhaps also the Foreign Secretary who’d implied siding with MI6 in this debacle. He’s not worried about lacking necessary evidence. But it’s going to take some Double-O level storytelling to fill up a mission report that will pass the scrutiny and withstand the outrage of the ISC. Technically even referring to himself as Q on it could be problematic, not to mention accessing highly classified systems even McPhail had not had clearances for, given that his renewed contract with MI6 only starts from today. 

They will have to coordinate their versions carefully to match together seamlessly.

M looks better than one really should after being severely beaten and threatened, but Q reminds himself that the man’s gone through a lot worse. This time, after all, he’d been held captive only a day. Blofeld should have known that too: it seems strange that they would have thought Mallory susceptible to breaking so soon under such comparatively light pressure. 

Q comes out of that conversation with an ‘office gossip of the year’ worthy piece of personal information that he surely would not have expected, even if he's not quite sure how to interpret it. At least Mallory is now trusting him. He’s going to have to talk with Eve, once he’s sure she’s really ok. 

Her escape from the torture bench still makes him shudder inside: the outdated electrodes had shorted out on the first shock and started smoking; she’d managed to shake them off and burn through the leather straps binding her wrists to the armrests. 002 had succeeded in opening three doorlocks by the the time he received Mallory’s warning, and he’d met Moneypenny, sligtly singed but otherwise unharmed, sheltering under a desk after she’d purposefully triggered the explosive connected to the last door. Together, they had gone after Lawson when he had retreated back there in an effort to escape from 009’s team. Suddenly the rumble of the collapsing building had started shaking the walls around them and blocking their way out through the back door. McPhail’s killswitch had activated with eight minutes still left on the clock. They’d made it out through the front eventually, and Q wasn’t yet exactly sure how, but 002 had also managed to drag Lawson out of the ruins. 009 had taken care of the rest of the surviving hostiles. He expects it to look like one of Bond’s mission reports in the good old days when agent Wright gets to finish his paperwork. They’re somewhat similar in their concise yet overly dramatic way of describing events, and it makes him smile in fond memory.

009 comes in for his debrief, arm in a sling but otherwise in good health and spirits. They greet each other like in the good old times and he hands in his specialised Walther on the go, as they continue to their respective duties. It feels incredibly  _ normal _ . It’s the first time after the two years he’d been gone that Q feels like he’s not out of step with this intricate machine MI6 is. 

Bond is still in the hospital. They are due a personal conversation as well, and Q wonders if he should go there and see him. But it’s just a non-life-threatening flesh wound and - despite the initial heavy bleeding - nothing major on the Bond-scale of injuries. He’s likely to be in a sour mood for it, but not incapacitated. Certainly not unable to call if he wanted to talk or wanted the company. And he hasn’t. Which… not exactly worries him. But unsettles him in a way that makes it difficult to concentrate on compiling his evidence-backed report for the ISC that he should currently be doing. 

Had it really been only yesterday morning that Bond had kissed him? Kissed him like he meant it. He can still practically feel the possessive lips on his; fingertips digging into his biceps and shoulders. It was real, but already feels like a long time ago. True, he’d been the one to instigate it, but Bond hadn’t exactly seemed to mind. Maybe it ranked low on the Bond-scale of mission-related flings, or maybe it didn’t qualify as such at all. But it was still something. A  _ huge _ something for Q. 

Hell, he knows Bond is traumatised by death and betrayal and the webs of lies almost all of his love interests have spun around him. Bond has  _ tried _ . What is spending five years with someone you know isn’t being completely honest with you, if not trying with everything you’ve got? There are limits to that, even for someone as ruthless towards himself as Bond. He wouldn’t want a  _ relationship _ . Not anymore - for a long time at least. He wouldn’t want to share a flat, leave for work together, fall into the same bed every night, even just to sleep off the tiredness after a bad day. (And remember... Fear... Worst of all, suspect.) 

No. If Bond ever did plan for a future it wouldn’t include an ‘us’. 

Q wouldn’t ask for any of that. He’d take whatever he could get, and give anything he could offer. Pathetic, maybe, but a truth nonetheless. Ever since that stupid quip Bond had made to Silva years ago that had made the gossip mill buzz for a day and his blood sing with possibility. 

“R, can you please come over here and proofread this thing for me,” he says, just to force his thoughts back on track. 

“Sure thing, Q. Just a second.” She looks at him for a bit too long, like he remembers her often doing shortly before he’d left. She types a quick message on her computer, and then hops into his vacated chair. “All right. I’m going to take this over for a while. Go lay down on the sofa and eat something. You look dead on your feet.”

* *

Bond has spent three days in the hospital by the time he judges the boredom to be a greater suffering than returning once more to the HQ to fill in the mission report that will be his last. He’s going to correct the past mistakes to the best of his ability; even fill out the forms to the letter. The thought of walking away dramatically like five years ago disgusts him. This time he’s going to face up to his own reflection, that monster in the mirror, and admit it’s time to give way to someone younger, better, more adept in the ways of modern spycraft. This time, he’s going to thank M for his continued trust and his colleagues for their support, and leave them with the means to contact him, should any of them still consider him a friend worth keeping in touch with.   
  
He’s thought about moving to Scotland. He doesn’t have the slightest idea what he’d do there, but it’s still familiar, still the place where he feels he could stay and rest for longer than a month or two and grow some kind of roots. 

Living in London and walking past his former life every day, no longer being a part of it, would grate on his nerves endlessly. 

His phone went out of battery sometime yesterday. He hasn’t bothered to ask for a cord to recharge it. To be honest, he had waited for M or maybe Tanner to call him the first thing after they got the most pressing matters settled following their return from Yorkshire. The way Q had talked about  _ possibilities _ … it had sounded so bloody promising to his hopeful ears that he’d thought for a moment that they might have had something already planned. That maybe Q had taken it up with Tanner or even directly with M, and he would call to offer him a position. Wishful thinking, obviously. He really should have taken better care to return equipment and maybe stick to the rules once or twice. 

Wishes aside, he’d had every reason to expect Q to call him, or maybe even drop by in person. Bond very well knows he’s busy. He needs to prove McPhail’s involvement in the Wakefield prison break, even though it’s obvious, but they need something tangible for the ISC. Still, would it have been too much to ask? He knows he can’t really judge, and he won’t. He knows from many occasions of personal experience how these things go. Heat of the moment, after-mission adrenaline high, they will drive a man to seek encounters that mean little once it’s over. Q had come to his senses before anything of the sort really even happened. He’d said so himself - that he was glad whatever feelings he might have harboured once were left in the past. Bond would have done his best to respect that and continue working together as colleagues, maybe even friends. Only now it looks more and more like that is never going to happen either. 

He’s in the middle of pondering if he should just grovel to M and beg for the  _ n _ th chance when the door to his room opens. He’d fully expected the doctor to come and check the stiches, then hopefully release him at long last, but it is most definitely not. He blinks twice to make sure his mind isn’t playing tricks on him. 

Nope. It’s still Paloma, smiling her most self-satisfied seductress smile as she saunters in. 

Bond is momentarily horrified. He’s starting to believe in destiny and it’s laughing at his face. There really is no escaping the loop.

The eerie feeling only partially dissipates as she starts speaking.   
  
“Hello, James, nice to see you’re still mostly in one piece. I was told you were here so I dropped by. Felix sends his regards.”

She hands him a thick envelope, no doubt the CIA equivalent of all the paperwork he will be required to fill in for Six. 

“He also told me to tell you that he’s located your baby.” There’s a beat, and she bursts out laughing. “What, stop gaping, he meant your car!”

“For fuck’s sake,” he groans, “It’s not funny. He owes me a really,  _ really _ big favour, you can tell him to ship it to London at his personal expense.”

“Will do,” she smiles, then goes serious. “I have to disappoint you, though, James. I’m not here specifically to see you. I take it you’re not aware that your next door neighbour is in fact Double-O-Seven?”

“She’s been transferred? When?”

“We arrived yesterday morning. She’s recovered well, all things considered… I don’t know if I should tell you this, but seeing as you saved her life--” She pauses for a moment, looking for the right words. “She didn’t thank you for it, at first. The day you left with my partner -- he didn’t thank you, either, by the way -- I found Nomi in her hospital bed, lifeless. She’d just been taken to her own room to recover after waking up from the surgery. She’d pulled off all the IV’s and somehow managed to overdose on opioids. They managed to save her, but it was a very close call.”

“She asked for a gun. When we were in the… in Q’s mini sub. I thought it was the pain talking.”

“She’d trained so hard her entire life, studied and prepared for serving her country among the best. Being a Double-O means everything to her. She would have taken death in the line of duty over being paralysed and at the mercy of society anytime.”

“And now..?”

“We don’t know. The doctors were able to remove both bullets neatly, even the one lodged in her spine, and it didn’t sever the spinal cord completely. It’s mostly up to luck and exercise how much her mobility will recover once all the swelling has gone down. She’s able to move both legs now, even stand up aided for a little bit. We’ll see.”

“You have got to know her well.”

“You could say that.” She smiles to herself, then adds, “Although, I’m looking forward to learning more of what makes her tick.”

“I see.” Bond chuckles, internally relieved that she’s not here for him. “Can I talk to her?”

“Sure. M just left, I think she should be free.”   
  
“ _ M _ ’s here!? Why the hell hasn’t he talked to me? My debrief--”

“Patience, patience…. I’m sure he’ll stop by once he’s done with something he was discussing with his secretary.”

“Moneypenny? Not a secretary. Personal assistant. Get that right, otherwise she’ll murder you.”

“Fine. I’m going to get her. See you around, James!” She leans in, kisses him on the cheek and stage-whispers before she goes, “Oh, by the way! I recall you weren’t happy with us younger spies and our concealed identities. Florencia Pereira, at your service.”

He’s soon greeted by the surprisingly cheerful Nomi, who rolls in on a wheelchair. She thanks him and tells him about her plans for the long-term rehab program. She hasn’t given up her number yet, she says, and he gets the feeling she’s going to fight for it with everything she’s got. He hopes Mallory will give her the benefit of the doubt. She’s an exceptionally competent agent. He tells her that, and pretends he doesn’t notice the tears welling up in her eyes. 

He has just wished her a speedy recovery and watched her leave, as a nurse breezes in, swiftly changing his bandages once more, and after she leaves, Dr. Sakai finally discharges him with the familiar instructions to keep the wound dry, change the bandage once every day until after 10 days the stitches can come off. Bond knows all this by heart, and for once, has zero urge to disobey any of the recommendations, even the ones to stay put and avoid unnecessary exertion. Normally, he would have been anxious to be out of the hospital after a day or two. This time he’s lacking direction and purpose and none of the things he needs to do once he’s out appeal to him in the slightest. 

M hasn’t appeared yet, and by this time it’s unlikely he will. It really is up to Bond himself to press for answers regarding his future.

He grabs the crutch the doctor left him with, and gingerly rests his weight on it as he takes a few careful steps. It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as he’d expected. The torn muscle had been a tad more complicated to sew up than initially thought, and the blood loss had got to him, hence the three-day stay to monitor the wound and keep him hydrated. He tosses the crutch on the bed.

He’s about to shuffle-walk out into the corridor, planning to call a taxi to Six, when he almost collides with someone hastily entering his room. He takes one badly placed step, and  _ then _ the leg decides to scream in agony, giving away from under him. 

Before he hits the floor, he’s hauled upright again by a strong grip on his shirt front and a supporting arm slips around him to grab him by the shoulder. When the starburst of pain behind his eyelids clears, he recognises it’s Q. 


	18. Chapter 18

“Sir, I’m afraid it’s urgent.” 

“Everything’s urgent today, Bill,” Mallory says as Tanner slows his jog to a walk, catching up with him. “Did Margetts come up with a plan for the new organization chart? I’ll need it by tomorrow. Bond needs an official position; something equal or above the Double-O designation. We need to have the changes approved by the board before we bring it to the ISC and make it look like everything was planned well in advance, Bond being the chosen candidate for the job. Otherwise there’ll be hell to pay for his stunts, again.”

“Yes, we’re handling it. That’s what I was going to say. How do you like Tactical Command becoming the official link between the Double-O division, Q Branch and Executive Branch? It would free the resources of both the Q Branch and us from being tied up in organising the missions. In-location coordination of the operations would probably improve. Agents might even stop disappearing on us after the job’s done.”

“It’s a fair idea. I can see the benefits. Can you see Bond agreeing to it, though? It’s not strictly a desk job, but...”

“I can see him agreeing to anything from an accounting slave to a live practise target, you name it. As long as you don’t station him abroad.”

That gives Mallory a pause. “You think he’s that desperate? What for?”

The fact is, they don’t need desperate people in their ranks. That kind of mindset can be too easily twisted. 

“I think he’s finally pulled his head out of his arse,” Tanner chuckles. 

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that he’s reflected upon his past mistakes and taking steps to correct them. I watched Bond here for a couple of days before the operation and during it. The man’s changed. He wants to belong here now, to work _with_ us, rather than for us. Maybe he’s found the right incentive.”

Oh. Interesting. He knows Bill won’t speculate further, but that’s enough for him to know what to look for proof, if he needs it. If it has any truth to it, that’s a good development, he muses. Bond is a top operative in any capacity, and everyone needs an anchor. 

Tanner goes on to explain his urgent news concerning 004’s mission with Mossad; that they might have found a very dangerous link between Safin and a terrorist cell that Mossad had scattered around the Persian Gulf in an effort to stop their attempt at acquiring dismantled Russian nuclear weapons. By the looks of things, the terrorists had switched their sights to newer technology and Intelscape in Dubai is just a tad too conveniently close. A prevented strike had yielded interesting intel, not least of which was the familiar white masks worn by the terrorists. It needs further investigating, and the priority status just changed drastically with that information. 

It actually sounds like something to delegate to the newly minted chief of the Tactical Command unit. If Bond accepts. Despite all the inevitable headache he’s very much not looking forward to, he hopes that he will. 

When Tanner is gone, he buries himself in the overflowing pile of paperwork and tries to tame it all into more easily manageable smaller stacks, which he then begins to settle one by one. Eve had taken two days off to recover from her ordeal; something he’d gladly granted her, but the effects of her being gone are instantly visible. He had always been old-fashioned in his preference of printed documents for archiving purposes, believing that it was both safer and more effectively memorised, but it did cost him a lot of extra work.

His damned phone rings again before he’s cleared the first smaller pile and he feels like thumbing it off completely, but then it registers: it’s not his work phone, it’s his private number that he’s given only to a handful of people. Considering who those people are, this spells trouble.

He closes the door and unconsciously walks into the farthest corner of his office to answer. He doesn’t recognize the number but the voice he would know anywhere even after many years. 

“ _Hi, Dad._ ”

“Thomas. Can I help you?”

“ _I think you already did. I… I know everything. About Mom. I just wanted to say I’m sorry._ ” 

“How did you… what do you mean, you know everything?”

“ _That she lied. That you sent money. She… I think she kept most of it. I had to sell grandmother’s paintings._ ” He’s quiet for a while, and Mallory can’t find his voice to ask his own son more questions. 

“ _I know why you kept the house. Why you’re still living in it. She told me you refused a prenup and exploited her wealth and property. I was a fucking idiot for never questioning her and I’m sorry_.”

“She would have lost it to her debtors,” he says, voice gone hoarse with emotion. “I wanted you to have it, when the time is right. It’s a piece of your family history.”

“ _Can I… I want to come home, Dad. Just for a visit. Will you have me over for a few days?_ ”

“You are always welcome home, Thomas. Always. To stay, if you’d like. Or just for a visit. However you want, whenever you want.”

“ _Oh god. I’ve been such a fucking moron. I can’t believe it, how could I be so fucking stupid. Tuesday? Can I come next tuesday?_ ”

“Tuesday is fine. Do you need anything?”

“ _No, I… Just, thanks. Thank you so much. For letting me know_.”

“Thank _you_ , Thomas. I’ll see you soon.”

He’s a wreck, he knows it even before he sees a teardrop splatter onto the table in front of him. He can’t recall the last time he’s cried. It won’t do to break down like this at the office. He wipes at his face and suddenly there’s a sound of the door opening, someone walking in. 

Looking up, he releases the breath he’d been unconsciously holding. It’s just Moneypenny. Could have been a lot worse. 

“Afternoon, I hear it’s been a very busy day,” she greets him cheerfully. Then she sees the state he’s in and stops on her tracks.

“Eve. It was you, wasn’t it? You proved it to Thomas. Made him call me.”

“I didn’t make him call you, that was his own decision. I figured you both deserved the truth. You, as well. Miranda’s used most of your money to her own ends. To hurt you. Part of it seems to have eventually ended up in Lawson’s pockets over the past few years. Almost sixty grand total, in fact. Q traced it.”

Of course. Not for the first time, he judges himself harshly for being too trusting. For refusing to see it. In his position, the enemies tended to slither close if there was even a tiny crack in your armour to squeeze through. 

He stands up and walks to the window, staring out of it, over the cityscape and past the continuous flow of people and vehicles. He’d made mistakes, personal as well as professional, beginning all the way from the clean-up after SPECTRE. Hiring McPhail on the ISC’s recommendation despite his initial concerns... To think that he might have lost _Eve_. It’s an unbearable concept.

He turns to her and the spontaneous question is out his mouth before he can reconsider the sanity of saying such things out loud. “Have I ever told you I love you?”

She laughs, surprised, but it’s a pleased, delightful sound. “No, but I guess now’s as good a time as any. I was just going to ask if you’d like to grab some dinner while we can spare a moment?”

It’s not quite the answer he might have hoped for, but it’s something positive, a beacon of light that promises better things to come out of this awful mess. Today has been a good day, the first in a very, very long time. 

* *

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Q slackens his hold on Bond once he’s sure the agent won’t topple to the ground. 

“Out of here, I’m allowed!”

“Without the crutches? Did you pull the stitches? I’m going to call for a nurse to check it.”

“No! Q, don’t you dare, it’s fine. Why are you here?”

“I can’t just come to see you? To wish you a speedy recovery?”

“It’s a bit late for that.”

Q sighs. Whatever he came here for, it definitely wasn’t to argue. 

“I’m sorry. I wanted to make sure I’d see you before you…”

“Left? Like last time?”

“No. Yes. I… sorry, I am really shit at this.” He feels like drowning, treading water in a bottomless ocean, no purchase to be reached. Out of his depth. He briefly closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to collect his thoughts. 

“Please talk to M. I’m not supposed to be telling you this now, but they are making some adjustments in the organisation hierarchy for you. They really do want you to stay. _I_ really want you to stay. Please.”

Bond winces, and at first he takes it as a reaction to his pleading, which makes him recoil in embarrassment. But then he gingerly sits down on the edge of the hospital bed, and Q remembers the pain from the aggravated injury.

“May I?” he asks, and at Bond’s nod, he carefully settles down next to him on the bed. 

“You are not an easy person to love, James. I still do. Whatever I said on the contrary, I take all that back. I’ve despised you, cursed you, even in some twisted way hated you. For all the things you put me through. For making me accept you always choosing someone else over whatever I could give you. But I could never stop loving you. You saw right through me trying to hide that I wanted you, and didn’t mock me once for it. You’ve trusted me with your life and your secrets, when I _know_ you haven’t trusted much on anything or anyone else. You look at me sometimes like _that_ , like you _see_ me, even the blood on my hands, and it doesn’t even phase you. I love you. I’ve tried so hard not to care that after all this time it couldn’t possibly be anything else.” 

He searches Bond’s face for clues, but the unreadable mask has slipped on, the one he’s used to seeing on his agents after missions. He knows Bond is affected, otherwise he wouldn’t be wearing it. But Q won’t regret saying this. He can’t.

“Even if you don’t want to hear it, I think you should know.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then the ice breaks.

“I do want to hear it. Every day from now on for as long as you mean it.”

He can’t remember ever seeing Bond cry before. The movement of his hand is instinctive as Q reaches over to brush away a trail of tears on the back of his fingers. A soft touch, slow caress on the damp skin. Bond closes his eyes and leans into it.

It’s a fragile moment, over too soon. 

He takes Bond’s hand and squeezes lightly, wondering at the uncharacteristic passivity of the other man. He seems to be almost in a haze. Q stands up and tugs lightly, urging Bond to follow him, and offers him the crutch before he has a chance to object. 

“Come on, then, I want to show you something,” he says, and a tendril of excitement curls somewhere deep inside of him. 

They make it out of the hospital and down to the parking lot before it occurs to Bond to question their destination or method of transportation. 

“Where are we going?”

“Why, I’m taking you to Six, of course. Isn’t that where you wanted to go?”

“You have a car?”

“Yes, I have a car. Obviously.”

He waits for Bond to catch up before they walk along one more row of vehicles, and there at the end of the line, Q stops and watches Bond’s expressions change, wishing he could record it all for posterity.

“What’s that?” Bond asks, after a slack-jawed pause. 

“A car, as I just pointed out. Aston Martin DB11. I thought you were familiar with it.”

“ _Yes_ . But.” Bond clears his throat, searching for words, and it’s hilarious. “It’s… certainly very… blue.”  
  
“I admit it seemed to fit in better with the scenery in Dubai,” Q says, and the smile lighting up James’ face ignites a gentle fire in his core. “Want to drive?” he asks, unlocks the car and hands over the key. “I’ve made a bunch of adjustments, naturally, but I’m sure you’ll find them rather boring. Nothing particularly explosive anyway, as I’d like to keep my car in one piece unlike some agents I know. Specialized anti-theft features - some of those are actually quite fun; signal disturbance, ultra-fast satellite and network connections, non-detectable direct-link to my home servers, all simultaneously usable by the driver via these two touch screens…”

“Does it have electrically tinted windows?”

“Sure, but it’s nothing new or interes---” and then he realises what Bond implied. “You did not just proposition me for sex in the car.”

Bond smirks, devilish as ever. “Of course I did. It’s a very nice car.”

“You’re insufferable. Get in.”

Q slams his door and revs the engine a bit more than necessary before speaking the directions for the on-board computer. An interactive road map flashes on the screen, and relevant data starts scrolling onto the other display. Q can be a show-off too; he loves his fancy cars the same as any Double-O. 

“You know, you wouldn’t believe the run of really sub-bar rides I’ve been subjected to lately,” Bond says, stroking the smooth black-and-blue upholstery like a cat.

A smile tugs at his lips, infectious, and Q finds his heart fluttering at the sight of ice-blue eyes sparkling with laughter. “You can always come to me for something better,” he says in his best bedroom voice, peering at James with half-lidded eyes. 

They both burst out laughing. 

“I intend to,” James says, and after a dramatic pause; “Felix found the DB5. I think it'll be in need of some fine-tuning.”

Q glares at him, still grinning. “You’re deliberately baiting me. What, you _want_ me to say that I hate you? I do so.” He pauses for effect. “But I love you more. Always have, always will.” 

He hopes honesty comes across in his words. Whatever Bond has done hasn’t changed how Q feels, and he doesn’t want the self-sabotaging guilt trips from either of them. He might be five years late saying the three words, but they should be said, and he will, every day for as long as he can.

James seems to be out of witty comebacks and regards him quietly for a few seconds. He doesn’t say it back. Not that Q expected such a thing. Instead, he clears his throat and says, “I’m going to look for a flat in London. I was thinking, somewhere close to you.”

Q finds his hand and entwines their fingers as he keeps driving. “I’d like that,” he simply says and smiles.

“Speaking of,” he continues after a while, “I got permission to return home. Our security team found the entrance code had been rigged. Must be Safin’s doing after he learned I’d betrayed him. Had I gone home instead of the safe house and identified myself….”

James squeezes his hand gently and says, “Good to hear it’s clear. You can drop me off at Six, I’ll see what Mallory and Tanner have planned and do the debrief after if I must. I’m sure it’ll be late by then. Catch you tomorrow?”

Q sighs, a little exasperated.

“Do I have to spell it out for you? You’re welcome to join me for a late dinner and stay the night if you want. I have a few errands to run first but I’ll be waiting for you.”

He pulls over close to the SIS headquarters’ main entrance and nods at James staring at the automatically opening passenger side door. “Off you go then!” he waves at James and watches him hobble inside the building, leaning heavily on the crutches. It’s endearing, really, how James seems to be one step behind and unsure of his footing. Q fully intends to enjoy his advantage while it lasts. 

He pulls off the curb and makes a quick illegal U-turn just for the hell of it. He wonders if it will catch the eye of his minions or the HQ security on the cameras, and if they’ll realise it’s him. The car is an eyecatcher enough as it is, and he fully anticipates to be interrogated for it by some of his more enthusiastic employees -- and Eve, of course. 

Happiness is bubbling somewhere deep inside him, as he pulls a sheet of paper out of his messenger bag and makes a quick stop at the so-called Universal Exports Cargo Center.

He’s sorting the paperwork at the service desk when familiar angry cat yowls somewhere behind him make him whip his head around and forget what he was writing. There they are, finally, his poor shaken sweethearts, carted towards him in a wooden crate, and definitely not happy about it. 

He haphazardly signs the papers and pays the outrageous sum they ask for these kinds of favours, Quartermaster or not. 

He hauls the crate to the backseat of the Aston, talking reassuringly the whole time, and drives home with shaking hands and a weird mist of happysadgrateful tears in his eyes. 

When he gets them inside and opens the hatch, it’s surprisingly Kitty who comes out first, sniffing at Q’s hands and clothes carefully. She rubs her tiny head against his palm, starting to purr, and he’s been forgiven. Cat looks nauseous, strings of drool hanging from her mouth and sticking to her whiskers. She’s pressed against the back of the crate and swishes her tail back and forth in an aggressive gesture. Q leaves the crate open on the floor and moves away, sitting on the sofa and cradling Kitty on his lap, talking softly. It takes fifteen minutes until Cat comes out and walks soundlessly across the room to where he’s sitting, hops on the sofa and curls down against his thigh. He knows better than to try and pet her, even though he longs to. Instead, he gives Kitty a peck on her questing nose and reaches for his laptop.

There’s a message alert on his gmail. 

_Did you know the best place to be in the world is Norway?_

It’s not a travel agency ad.

He sighs, considers it for moment, and fires away a reply:

_All cats are grey in the dark_ . _Especially Norwegian forest cats._

Then he deletes the message, the whole account, and destroys every single trace of it from existence, purging the long history of anything he’d ever signed into using that address. One more of his identities is gone forever. Benjamin Shaw, his life, achievements and acquaintances, will be gone too, but it’s going to take a bit more time and effort. It hurts, but that’s his penance. That’s his gift to the people who’d meant something to him in another life, and especially the one who had kept his sweethearts safe.

He feeds the cats and consequently remembers he’d promised James a late dinner. Swearing internally, he finds pasta ingredients and a bottle of cheap wine. He’d forgotten how poorly stocked his kitchen would be after spending a lot of time away. The rushed struggle to try and prepare everything in time will be useless by now, he just knows it. Still, he has to try. He’s just pulling his shoes on, about to dash to the nearby Tesco, when James appears at the door. 

Shit, shit, shit… 

He opens the door, apologetic. “I’m sorry, James… things came up and I... got a little sidetracked. A lot sidetracked, in fact. For a couple of hours... So the dinner isn’t--”

“Never mind the dinner. We can skip straight to the dessert.” If Q had been anticipating to be swept off his feet by a passionate embrace, he’s not very much disappointed by the actual reality of James pushing past him into the kitchen, carrying a bottle of quality champagne - he’s not a connoisseur by any means, but given it’s bought by James, it must be - and the most decadent chocolatey dream of a mud cake he’s ever seen. How he manages to balance it all in his hands while heavily relying on the crutch is uncanny. He’s even dressed up for a proper date, Q notices, and steals a regretful glance at his own rumpled office wear. 

James sees it too, of course he does, the ever-observant bastard. Q half-expects a lascivious comment like _don’t worry about the dress code; you’ll soon be out of them anyway_ , but James has an altogether different gleam in his eyes. The look is sincere, reverent almost, as he looks at Q intently like mapping every detail. It makes him feel tingly all over, but not in a bad way - just very aware of the lingering gaze. 

“I want to thank you,” James finally says, his offerings left on the kitchen table. “For everything. Giving me another chance. For reminding me I have a purpose and a place in the world. _For still loving me_.”

Q gets his embrace and the kiss that steals his breath away. Maybe it’s less ferocious and more heartfelt than he’d thought, but it’s all the _better_ for it. There’s the sudden uncontrollable feeling of falling into the unknown, and it occurs to Q how terribly much he wants this to last. How truly incapable he would be to further follow his own idea of not demanding, not expecting, settling for whatever James is willing to give. 

“How did it go?” he manages to ask before he’s dizzy with need, and this is important. 

“Hmm?” James sounds just as far-gone already, but gathers his wits enough to answer. “I’m going to be a letter instead of a number.”

Q doesn’t ask for details. Anything else can wait.

* *

The clang of the door opening at the other end of the corridor wakes him up from a light doze, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld sidles up to the door of his cell. He leans against the bars, nonchalant, waiting.  
  
A guard walks in, followed by a familiar shapely figure carrying a stack of papers. A light above them flickers, as if disturbed by the electricity in the air that surrounds her.  
  
“Time for your assessment,” the guard nods at him and leaves.  
  
She walks up to him, slowly, and locks her gaze with his. This is it, then.

“I knew you’d come for me.” 

It’s the truth: ultimately she’s the only one of his enemies who has a spine. 

  
“I didn’t want to be the one doing this,” she says, pulling a gun from her handbag, and pointing it directly at his forehead. “But it’s the only way this madness ends. For my father.”  
  
Blofeld finally looks his executioner in the eye as Madeleine squeezes the trigger.

  
  


FIN

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congratulations, you've made it all the way to the end! Thank you sooooo much for reading; now go praise themuller's awesome artwork <3
> 
> And in case you were wondering.... Q's very blue Aston Martin is REAL: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/geneva-motor-show/q-has-made-very-blue-aston-martin-db11
> 
> (The awesome true story behind this idea was that I tried to figure out what kind of a car he'd want and I thought... yeah, Aston Martin DB11 since he's familiar with it, probably has loads of ideas how to modify one to his liking... and the colour should be something a little "extra" like dark blue... Imagine my surprise when I literally googled 'dark blue aston martin 2019' for reference and THIS comes up! It's too good not to use. )


End file.
